Staying inside on National Coming Out Day

BY JOHN REINDL

This Wed., Oct. 10 once again marks National Coming Out Day. In past years, Yale's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Cooperative (LGBT) has observed this nationwide "coming out" by erecting a giant closet door in the center of Cross Campus. Gay students who are already open about their sexuality are asked to dress in jeans and a white t-shirt to show gay students who have yet to make their sexuality public that if they do so, they will not be alone at Yale.

JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

The major objective of the day is for this population of "closeted" Yalies to make their true sexuality public knowledge. Preferably, this is done by slipping into the pair of jeans and t-shirt, and walking through the Cross Campus closet door for everyone to see. Once the student has sprung forth from the closet, everyone presumably informs her of how awesome she has just become and gives her a big hug. Now that everybody knows that she likes sleeping with other girls, her life will supposedly be filled with newfound happiness and joy. If only that were truly the case.

One of my favorite parodies from The Onion appeared this past summer with the headline, "Gay pride parade sets mainstream acceptance of gays back 50 years." In this phony article, middle-class mothers and fathers comment on how before they came to this parade, they considered gay people down-to-earth individuals, capable of caring relationships and concern for their community. However, after watching the parade filled with drag queens and hairy "daddies" in leather, they change their minds.

An implied point is that most Americans are willing to accept homosexuality as normal behavior in its objective form; a recent Gallup poll revealed that 52 percent of Americans now view homosexuality as an acceptable alternative lifestyle. The problem is that once an over-the-top atmosphere is thrown into the gay image, many Americans become hesitant about being sympathetic toward homosexuality because it seems so foreign.

National Coming Out Day turns what should be a very personal and gradual process into a rushed, sensational, and drama-filled afternoon that wrongfully makes the coming out of an individual into an official event with an added carnivalistic atmosphere.

This spectacle ultimately alienates gay students from their classmates. Revealing that one's sexual orientation is in fact different from what everyone has assumed can affect a student's interaction with family, friends, and classmates.

This coming-out process is usually least traumatic for everyone if the person coming out does so to his closest family members and friends, later informing more distant friends and acquaintances as he becomes more comfortable dealing with his sexuality. Holding a Coming Out Day transforms this gradual process into an official announcement. In a very short space of time, the individuals coming out along with all of their friends and acquaintances are abruptly forced to face this life-altering admission simultaneously and without any prior warning.

The hoopla surrounding Coming Out Day serves to make newly-out gay students feel even more different from their peers. The last thing gay students need to feel is that in coming out, old friends and support structures have abandoned them. But by asking that students to choose to come out wearing an official "gay" uniform of jeans and a white t-shirt, sending them off from a purple wooden doorway at the center of campus, and having the entire school made aware of the fact through the numerous postsings that people will be broadcasting their new sexuality, National Coming Out Day ostracizes those who come out at a level beyond that of society's already stigmatized view.

There is presently only one group at Yale that truly does benefit from the publicity and drama of National Coming Out Day: the connoisseurs of "fresh meat." This includes the percentage of the gay population that is more then eager to count how many white t-shirts they'll see dotting Old Campus, to discover whether that closeted fraternity boy has finally faced reality, and to see whose mothers stumbled upon their journals over the summer.

If you are gay and closeted, please keep your Levi's at home and the white t-shirt on the GAP sales-rack. This Wednesday's Coming Out Day will only add more anxiety to an already difficult and complicated process.

John Reindl is a junior in Berkeley.

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