For National Coming Out Day, Four Memorable Quotes

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Make no mistake, hiding one's true self away in a closet and creating a facade of heterosexuality is not without its consequences. It may appear to have a degree of safety but from my experience they are very unhealthy places and do all kinds of terrible things to individuals psychologically, emotionally and behaviorally . . . to say nothing of projection. The damage of the fear, shame, guilt and self-loathing that exist inside a closet are often reflected unknowingly in the external life of the individual. In or out of the closet; there is a price to pay. Each individual must weigh up the consequences of honesty, openness, secrecy and deception for themselves. Coming out, for most of us, is like an exorcism that releases us of the darkness we have lived in for years and caused us to believe awful things about ourselves. On the other side of the looking glass are freedom, light and life.

– Anthony Venn-Brown
Excerpted from A Life of Unlearning: A Journey to Find the Truth

The closet symbolizes isolation, the individual without society, a stranger even to the self.

– Kathy Weston

Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every [fallacy], every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all. And once you do, you will feel so much better.

– Harvey Milk

Coming out, and by extension coming out stories, are important because people evolve when they tell the truth. Some people evolve when they hear the truth.

– Lucy Jane Bledsoe
“Finding Myself in Antarctica”
The Gay and Lesbian Review
July-August 2010

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
Coming Out: An Act of Holiness
The Raising of Lazarus and the Gay Experience of Coming Out
Something to Think About – September 6, 2013
Quote of the Day – October 24, 2012
The Longing for Love: God's Primal Beatitude
Quote of the Day – November 1, 2011
Standing Strong
Soul Deep

And for my own coming out story, see The Wild Reed series, In the Footsteps of Spring:
Introduction
Part 1: The Light Within
Part 2: Shards of Summer
Part 3: Intimate Soliloquies
Part 4: Coming Out
Part 5: No Stranger Am I