“Thank you for coming out, no pun intended,” joked Janelle Sprague as she opened the 2007 National Coming-Out Day Panel on October 10.
She went on to give a brief explanation of the occasion. National Coming Out Day began in 1988 in commemoration of the first Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender march in Washington. According to Hcr.org, this year is particularly important because it is the 20 anniversary of the march.
The panel included professors and students who gathered to tell their own stories. PSU Professors Robert Miller and Wendy Palmquist were first to speak, as a voice for an older generation. Miller said, “My story takes place in a different historical time. I grew up in the 50s and 60s… It was a time where it was really hard to figure out what it was all about and to find ourselves, in this generation.”
Miller went on to tell his own coming out story. As a child, his dad pressured him to play games such as football, but Miller says “I was interested in things like raising flowers and arranging them tastefully in vases.”
Growing older, in his career as a professor, he encountered a student named Carol. The two forged a sort of friendship. Miller added, “She said to me one day ‘Robert we need to have a talk.’ We sat down to talk and she led the conversation.” Carol ended up coming out to Miller, to which he responded, “Well, so am I, we’re even.”
Professor Palmquist said that her experiences as a summer camp counselor played a vital part in the coming out process for her. The camp director had a relationship with another woman which Palmquist observed from a distance. After Palmquist had come to terms with her own sexuality, she said,”The camp director figured it out that I had joined them.”
Like Miller, Palmquist had to deal with parental disapproval. She said that she received a letter from her mother telling Palmquist to “never tell her what she thought was going on.”
Trevor Chandler, along with several other students, represented the younger generation. They detailed their own coming out experiences, showing the differences and similarities which the gap created.
Chandler told of his experience in coming out to his parents. He was traveling in the car with his mother and found it difficult to decide how to tell her. He says “All of a sudden, I just said, ‘Mom, I’m gay.’ And she said, ‘Gay gay, or happy gay?'”
Young or old, each spoke of their conflicting feelings and the reactions of friends and family members. Featuring as well was the welcoming atmosphere of PSU and hope for the future.