Coming Around: Parenting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Kids (13 page)

Why is coming out so important? Because when gays come out, they no longer have to lie, hide and evade to make it through the day.
They no longer have to silence their anger when derogatory comments are made about them. Coming out aligns the internal experience with the external experience—that’s fundamental to living with integrity. Coming out as a homosexual is like finding one’s way out of the darkness and into the light. Whatever dangers await, at least they are real dangers, faced head-on, and not imagined dangers from which one recoils.

Coming out when one is homosexual results in better health. Disclosure of sexual orientation has been associated with decreased mental health problems, such as less stress and fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, higher self-esteem, increases in strength and courage and improved social skills.
²
Coming out is also better for couples. LGB couples who are out report greater relationship satisfaction than those who are in the closet.
³
University of Akron researchers Michelle Vaughan and Charles Waehler considered how minority stress might foster social-emotional development. A careful review of the data on coming out revealed gains in five domains: honesty/authenticity, personal/social identity, mental health/resilience, social/relational and advocacy/generativity. Vaughan describes these gains as “coming out growth.”
⁴

When compared to LGBs who come out, LGBs who conceal their sexual identities have faster HIV infection progression, increased distress that can lead to depression and suicide, fewer job promotions and more negative job attitudes.
⁵
There is evidence to suggest that being in the closet may negatively affect work performance on both cognitive and physical tasks.
⁶
Hiding one’s true sexual orientation is agonizing and depletes mental and emotional resources.

It is difficult to conceal one’s sexual orientation. If you are in a relationship with a partner, try this experiment. Try going for one month without saying anything to anyone about your partner. If you have a ring, take it off. If you have photos on your desk at work, remove them. If people ask you what you did over the weekend, say that you spent it alone or with a friend. Be prepared to lie, because you will find that you have to lie a lot. You will also have to silence yourself and withdraw from conversations about family in order to avoid lying. If you try this experiment, I think you will quickly come to understand why coming out is so important to mental health.

Barry’s Story

Barry (fifty-seven years old) and Carla (forty-seven years old) have been married for twenty-three years. The couple has four children ranging from fourteen to twenty years old. One spring morning, Barry showed up unexpectedly at his parents’ door. He was pale, so his mother took his hand and led him to a chair. He sat with his head in his hands and began to cry. Once his mother was sure that Barry was not having a medical crisis, she called to his father and they gathered at the kitchen table. His parents pleaded with Barry to tell them what had happened and after a long silence he said, “I’m leaving Carla. See, I’ve been having an affair with…Mom, Dad—I’m gay.” Barry’s parents looked at each other, then back to Barry. With a look of utter bafflement, his mother said, “How can this be? You and Carla have been together so long. You have four children together!”

Some gay people marry heterosexual mates, but they do so for the wrong reasons. Barry may have married Carla in an effort to blot out his sexual orientation or he may have been in such a state of denial that he didn’t know, at a conscious level, that he was gay. How could someone block out something as substantial as sexual orientation? The human mind has an incredible capacity for denial. Denial is a healthy defense mechanism. If you were told that you had a terminal illness, denial would slow the absorption of this overwhelming news, thus making it more emotionally digestible. But denial becomes a problem when it blocks absorption of the bad news completely. If homosexuality is repugnant to Barry, he likely denied his homosexuality. If he remained stuck in that denial, he may have married and remained in that marriage for years. Without a doubt, intimacy would be lacking in the relationship. Barry probably withdrew from sexual contact or used fantasy to become aroused. His fantasies likely provoked shame and/or dissonance that added to emotional distance between himself and his wife.

The drive for intimacy is powerful. In Barry’s case, it is powerful enough to break through his denial. Initially, Barry may have seen his affair as a way to relieve a need without changing his life. To accomplish this, he would have to minimize its importance and compartmentalize his need, separating sex from relationship. Sex then becomes dirty and lustful and the marriage becomes sexless. Eventually, love or shame makes this unnatural condition unbearable and the truth demands to be told.

Barry is in his fifties, but in some ways he is going through adolescence all over again. Despite his age, he is just now reconciling his sexual orientation with his values. He is beginning to integrate his sexuality with his identity. He is planning a new future for himself as a gay man. Because of his age, he has dealt with crises and hardships before and this is to his advantage. He is less likely than an adolescent to see the situation as a crisis without end. He does, however, have responsibilities that weigh on him. He must consider how his coming out will affect his wife and children.

In these situations, counseling is very valuable. Individual counseling can help Barry understand the coming out process and deal with feelings of guilt and shame. Couple’s counseling can help Carla express her feelings and come to terms with the end of her marriage. Family therapy, which would likely follow after couple’s counseling, can address the children’s questions and concerns. This will be a difficult adjustment for some, if not all, of Barry’s family, but once they adjust, they will, in my opinion, find that living the truth is better than living a lie.

WHEN TO COME OUT

There are a few caveats to the general truth that coming out is psychologically advantageous. If the gay individual is particularly inhibited and sensitive to social disapproval, the stressors associated with stigmatization may override the advantages of being out.
⁷
In addition, a hostile environment can be so burdensome to gays that it is simply not worth being out. This is probably why many LGBTQ youths and adults are often selective about disclosure of sexual orientation. In fact, most LGBTQs are not out to everyone in all settings.
⁸
While coming out has many health benefits, being selective about when and to whom one comes out may have benefits as well.

What determines the timing of coming out? Today, gays are disclosing their sexual orientations at earlier ages than they did a decade ago. Recent studies put the age of first disclosure at about sixteen or seventeen years of age,
⁹
but a bevy of factors influence when any particular child begins disclosing his or her sexual orientation.

Gay men and lesbians tend to come out earlier than bisexuals.
¹⁰
There are probably several reasons why bisexuals delay coming out.
One might be that bisexuals first establish a “heterosexual” identity; this is the safest and easiest route to satisfying relational needs.
¹¹
Another possibility for the delay is a lack of support from the gay community.
¹²
Bisexuals are sometimes viewed by gay men and lesbians as “passing” as heterosexuals and therefore bypassing the prejudice homosexuals must endure.

Coming out opens the door to discrimination and victimization. Social psychologists Dr. Anthony Bogaert and Dr. Carolyn Hafer of Brock University explored whether an individual’s perception of the risks associated with being gay impact the timing of coming out. The researchers’ theories and expectations included:
¹³

       
•  Gays who believed in a “just world” would be more likely to come out earlier than gays who see the world as unfair.

       
•  Having a sense of self-efficacy and personal control—believing that you have the ability to tackle what you set out to do—would be associated with coming out earlier.

       
•  People who saw themselves as physically attractive would come out earlier. Among other benefits, being attractive is associated with greater social confidence and greater sexual assertion. Attractive people are treated more positively and punished less harshly.

       
•  Gender nonconformity would play a role in coming out, but the researchers didn’t know if it would speed it up or delay it.

Bogaert and Hafer had some interesting findings. Gay and bisexual men who believed in a just world came out earlier, but this was true only for more effeminate men, the subgroup of men most at risk for victimization. This finding has to be interpreted with caution. Does a belief in a just world buffer effeminate gay men from perceiving coming out as risky or do these men have more experience with an unjust world and so would not come out at all unless they had a strong belief in a just world? It’s hard to say. Self-efficacy and personal control did not affect the timing of coming out. This may suggest that the factors over which one has no control, such as whether a school is gay-friendly, play a substantial role in the decision of whether to come out. As predicted, physical attractiveness was associated with coming out earlier. The world is easier on attractive people, even those of minority status, and apparently people sense this benefit at an early age.

WHO IS TOLD FIRST?

When adolescents come out, they generally tell their friends first. This may be because, in general, gay youths report getting the most support from friends with managing stressors specifically related to being a sexual minority.
¹⁴
Depending on a variety of factors, such as religious beliefs, teens then tell siblings or mothers. Fathers are often the last to know. Most research suggests that fathers react more negatively to a child’s coming out than mothers, but a recent study found no difference between how fathers and mothers react, suggesting that fathers may be coming around.
¹⁵
Caucasians are more likely to come out to their parents than African Americans, Latinos and Asian/Pacific Islanders.
¹⁶
In these cultures there may be greater expectations placed on children to uphold tradition, maintain gender roles and protect family harmony. Among African American families, adolescents often tell extended family members, aunts, uncles and cousins before telling their parents.
¹⁷

COMING OUT WHEN YOU’RE EXPONENTIALLY DIFFERENT

Some people have more than one minority affiliation. In fact, many people do. To be seen as different in more than one way is not necessarily a burden. For example, some minority religions are more accepting of homosexuality than majority religions. Barney Frank, who has been a respected member of the House of Representatives, once stated in an interview, “I’m used to being in a minority. Hey, I’m a left-handed gay Jew. I’ve never felt, automatically, a member of any majority.”
¹⁸
When minority identities intersect, the results can be surprising.

The research on race and homophobia is difficult to interpret. Some researchers report that African Americans are more homophobic than Caucasians, with especially high levels of homophobia among male African American adolescents. A closer look at the research reveals the relationship between race and homophobia is modulated by other factors, such as age and religious affiliation.
¹⁹

At one time, it was thought that double minorities (such as being both black and gay) suffered an internal conflict between identities. This doesn’t appear to be the case. Most people of color are able to
coalesce multiple identities without forestalling identity development.
²⁰
Certainly, double minorities face more stressors just by virtue of being subjugated to multiple types of bigotry. In addition, racial minorities are more likely than Caucasians to be economically disadvantaged, with all that goes with it, such as poorer schools and reduced access to good nutrition. With all that adversity, one might expect to find double minorities doing poorly when compared with Caucasian LGBTQs, but this is not always the case.

While LGB adolescents of color commit suicide at higher rates than their white counterparts, the lifetime prevalence (rate of occurrence over the course of a lifetime) of mental health disorders in Latino and African American LGBs is similar to that of Caucasians.
²¹
It is speculated that experience coping with racism prepares racial minorities to deal with homophobia more effectively; they are more resilient than their white counterparts and this added resiliency mitigates the effects of having a greater number of stressors.
²²

If your child is of a different race, ethnic group or religion than the majority of people in your country or city in multiple ways, it may help to explore each of these differences individually and in combination. For example, Kia’s biological parents are Korean and the child is adopted as an infant by an African American couple. As a young girl she is diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which is well controlled with daily insulin injections. As she grows up she finds she is bisexual. In a number of ways she is different from the majority of her peers. Kia has an Asian appearance, but her ethnic identity is tied to her African American adoptive parents and African American neighborhood. If she takes an interest in her Korean heritage, she might think of herself as having dual ethnicity. While her diabetes disorder is not a visible difference, it may make her feel different. On a daily basis Kia must closely monitor her blood sugar and administer her injections. She has to be careful about what she eats and when she eats. What about her bisexuality? If she attends a gay-friendly school, being bisexual may prove to be just one more difference and not particularly burdensome. If she attends a school that bans LGBTQ activities and discourages any attempt to form groups such as Gay-Straight Alliance, then being openly bisexual may take a lot of courage and may interfere with her success at school.