A friend on facebook decided to come out to the significant people in his life. A few days afterwards he wrote this This is one of my proudest moments :-)!!! And what a relief !! Now I have much work to do to make this World a place of love and acceptance for all people 🙂

I replied on his wall with this When we choose to live authentically we chip away at others prisons of pretend. In or out of the closet we can pay a price. If we hide in the closet dark things can be attached to our gay self like shame and fear. Fear controls us. Shame ma…kes us feel bad about ourselves. Many people have lived with it for soooo long they are no longer aware of how stressful it is living a fragmented life and having to watch what they do or say in case the secret gets out. It is only when they boldly or carefully step out that they experience a sense of relief from the pressure of constant monitoring…..and of course shame is overcome by pride and self respect. Most straight people just dont understand gay pride because they have never had to live (like many of us) with gay shame. Welcome to a life of authenticity and integrity my friend.

thought this might make an interesting discussion question.

Ugh, I can’t believe the amount of freedom I now have to be who I am.

Totally agreeing with you Pierre!

Yeah, I am definitely more relaxed around the people who know than the people who don’t know. Even when we are talking about completely random stuff. I just feel like there isn’t any expectations put on me as a gay Christian, because no one knows what to expect!

I’m looking forward to being able to just let everyone know I am gay. I’m finding that I am starting to “slip” a little bit more because I just don’t care about hiding things as much as I used to now that I have come to accept myself. This leads to some amazingly cleaver recovery lines sometimes (I am scared by how well I have lied over the years).

I can’t imagine what it must have been like being married. Yikes. I am really happy to be figuring stuff out in my 20s!

I was talking with a friend about how I wanted to come out publicly. They warned me to think it over for a while because once I did I could never take it back. I would also be thought of as the gay guy at church, etc (and they still think I can change).

So I surfed the internet trying to find anyone who said they regretted coming out 5 or 10 years after the fact. I couldn’t find anyone. I did find a lot of people who said they regretted not coming out sooner. I thought that was telling.