Editorial: Open and honest / When gays come out, stereotypes are broken - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Editorial: Open and honest / When gays come out, stereotypes are broken
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

From Administrative Professionals Day (formerly Secretary's Day) to World Health Day, hundreds of commemorative days pay tribute to a variety of causes, contributions and needs every year.

Among those that often pass unnoticed was Tuesday's National Coming Out Day. Held every Oct. 11 since 1987, it focuses attention on the emotional struggle that many individuals who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered face in deciding whether they can live honestly and openly.

Coming out means coming out of the closet, opening the door on the secret life that so many GLBT individuals feel forced to live. Living an open, honest life -- without the constant stress of keeping secrets about who you really are -- is one of the cornerstones of a healthy lifestyle.

Millions of people in the United States are forced to live a lie about their sexual orientation because of unfortunate stereotypes and prejudices about homosexuality that still linger in society. While there is growing acceptance that human beings have a spectrum of sexual orientations, rather than a fixed preference for heterosexuality, acknowledging one's difference still carries a risk of ridicule, harassment, hate crimes, discrimination in employment and even ostracism from family members.

As a Post-Gazette Magazine story noted Tuesday, some GLBT people believe they face bigger difficulties in coming out in a socially conservative place. "It's almost like Pittsburgh has this unbending mind-set and an antiquated value system, and we're just not progressive and not prone to new ways of doing things," said Ron Pedersen Jr., a ministry student and lay preacher from North Versailles who is gay.

Research in psychology suggests that most prejudice is rooted not in actual experience with other people, but in stereotypes, isolation and lack of knowledge. As more GLBT people do live their sexual orientation, just like the rest of life, tolerance of this basic human difference also may grow.