Making Gay Okay: The Evolution of “Coming Out”

1997: Madeleine Albright becomes the first female Secretary of State, Titanic brings teens to tears and Eddie Murphy “gives a ride” to a transsexual prostitute. This was also the year that Ellen DeGeneres Willy Wonka-elevator’d straight through the glass ceiling of sexuality when she came out as a lesbian during the fourth season of her eponymous sitcom.

In the now-infamous “puppy” episode, Ellen’s therapist (an appropriately cast Oprah Winfrey) helps her come to the conclusion that she’s gay — And based on the way that people reacted, you would have thought that pigs in tutus were flying rampant in the clouds. The episode coincided with Ellen’s “Yep, I’m Gay” Time magazine cover and countless interviews that clarified to the public that this wasn’t just made-for-t.v. There was a lot of backlash: Winfrey got race-driven threats, Laura Dern (who played Ellen’s love interest in the episode) couldn’t get work for more than a year. Ellen was cancelled the following season.

16 years later, Ellen has won 13 Emmys, snagged the No. 1 spot on People With Money’s top 10 highest-paid comediennes and is legally wed to her babelicious love, Portia de Rossi. In short, things have changed.

Last summer, after Anderson Cooper (whose sexuality was long-speculated) came out via an email to the Daily Beast’s Andrew Sullivan, an article titled “The New Art of Coming Out” graced the cover of Entertainment Weekly. Cooper’s coming out was hardly a shock to most, but the way in which he decided to reveal it was a testament to our culture’s progress in normalizing homosexuality.

This “new normal” is starting to become positively contagious. It’s what prompted Evan Rachel Wood, the (married and pregnant) 25-year-old star of A Case of You, to finally open up to her family about her bisexuality in 2011, and what has allowed stars like Jim Parsons, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Jane Lynch to avoid the carefully crafted PR statement and fly relatively under the radar with matter-of-fact, just-another-word-in-a-sentence reveals.

Clearly, plenty of people still struggle with social and/or familial acceptability. And not everyone can comfortably come to terms with the anxieties of being out. I have a good friend, “B”, who’s gayer than the day is long and works as a buyer for women’s shoes. B and his boyfriend have lived together for the last two years (they’ve been together for five) in a precious apartment you’d swear was a collaborative effort between Martha Stewart and Bree Van de Kamp. Approaching 30, B has never actually come out to his Southern Baptist parents. So when his parents first came to visit him at his new apartment, B would refer to his boyfriend as his roommate. They have a one bedroom. Today, B is out to one of his sisters, but despite having his boyfriend join the family for occasional holidays, it’s still never been verbalized. And B’s not sure that it ever will be.

But “the talk” is evolving in the public sphere and that is important. The more we continue to normalize sexuality, the less taboo it becomes and the more easily people can just go on living their lives and loving the ones they’re with. We are making great strides in marriage equality (WAY TO GO, RHODE ISLAND) and if you don’t like it, feel free to turn a blind eye. Besides, two dudes in New York getting married in gingham doesn’t have a damn thing to do with your heterosexual, boot-scootin’ marriage in South Carolina. They are separate and equal — Even if one is more slightly fabulous than the other. Just sayin’.Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock

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