Coming out as a gay man, twice, for this government worker

“I struggled with how I should now identify,” he said. “Am I still gay? Am I pan or bi?”

Pansexual refers to being attracted to people of any gender or gender identity, based on the prefix “pan” from the ancient Greek word for “all” or “every.” Bisexuality is an attraction to more than one gender.

Gender and sexual identity terms can get complicated for people in the LGBTQ+ community. Even more so to outsiders who don’t understand all the terms or their increasing importance in our culture.

“I just hope others struggling with identity can find such happiness and love as I have,” Parker said.

Parker and his partner are now married but their first year together came with many of the same judgments, challenges and sacrifices that many people in the LGBTQ+ community must deal with when they come out.

“I lost friends all over again because of this new coming out,” Parker said.

He’s a funeral director who’s a senior investigator for the Lake County coroner’s office. He is highly educated, well traveled, and not shy about expressing himself and his spouse, who I’m not naming to protect his privacy.

“My husband identifies as male and thus we should be considered a gay relationship,” Parker said.

“Friends I had that are gay felt I betrayed the gay community for being in a relationship with a man that has female parts. Even with us now biologically having a child together, I have family … who couldn’t accept for years that I was gay, but somehow it became worse when I fell in love with a trans man,” he said.

Love is love, as the phrase goes. But hate is hate, and ignorance is ignorance. This is why coming out publicly, or to family, friends and coworkers, can be a profoundly emotional experience and a dangerous admission in our society.

It’s a shame this is still a reality in 2024, which is why National Coming Out Day is needed as much today as it was in 1988, when it was established. It takes place on Oct. 11, the anniversary date of the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987.

Around that time, a friend of mine named Rex shared his coming out story with me. I didn’t realize the power and poignancy of what it meant to him and to millions of other people in his situation at the time.

Rex, which isn’t his birth name, was a gay man in his 20s when I knew him. He educated me to the intimate meaning of coming out publicly, which takes bravery at any age. Friends can be lost. Family members can disown you. Employers can find excuses to desert you. Haters can attack you.

As a straight man, I have no comprehension of what it feels like to risk all that simply to be who I am. Yet this is the risk that’s taken — courageously, I believe — by people in the LGBTQ+ community.

“Be yourself no matter what. Stand your ground and be proud of who you are,” Parker wrote on his Facebook page earlier this week. He was addressing the annual and predictable backlash from critics, bigots and homophobes in response to National Coming Out Day.

“There is no need for such a day,” readers have told me in the past.

“Why isn’t there a national day for straight people,” I’ve been told.

“We’re tired of hearing about gay and trans people,” I’ve been told.

Well, until they are treated with civility and respect, and given equal opportunities without fear of prejudice or harm, our society will need a National Coming Out Day. Similar to how our country continues to need a Black History Month and Women’s History Month.

Marginalized communities need social awareness like ignorance needs education. It’s a constant struggle and I admire people such as Parker, and his spouse, for risking their reputation, social identity and possibly their safety.

They’re not only coming out about their sexual orientation or gender identity, they’re coming out to condemn hate, ignorance and violence in the delusional name of self-righteousness. And don’t bring up religion to me to justify hate or intolerance. Jesus condemned hypocrites, not homosexuals.

“All in all it doesn’t matter others’ opinions. They are only small roadblocks and annoyances,” Parker said.

“Life truly is what you make it despite the letdowns in how humanity treats one another. Nothing has stopped me from being what others would call normal. It has been a difficult trip … but in any instance life isn’t easy, just harder for others sometime.”

It shouldn’t have to be harder for people in his ever-evolving yet historically persecuted community. Life is difficult enough without the additional burden of fear and anxiety for being who you are, or the complex process to figure it out.

Hopefully, by the time Parker’s future child turns his age, 45, our country will be less judgmental and more understanding to this rising population of people. But I don’t think 45 years will be enough time.