Brody's Scribbles... What Can Be Said About "Coming Out Day"

By Tim Trent (Dartmouth, England) OCT 11 | The first and foremost thing is to remember that your sexuality is a personal thing. So I will start with reasons not to come out as gay. Actually there is only one reason. If it will harm you to come out publicly then do not do so.

That's it, simple and concise.

I really do not expect people in nations like Iran, Uganda, North Korea, Saudi Arabia to make their sexuality public. Nor do I expect those living in tight knit Islamic communities to come out. Nor do I expect those who feel in any way forced by anyone else to come out.

I think, quite simply, that coming out is a personal process, done for one's own reasons. The date can encourage you, but it should not force you.

It's taken me ages to come out. I knew I was different at 13. I finally came out to the world at 57.

I didn't make a splash. I told my family, all of them. I've terminated relations with my cousin Anthony Marfleet because of his appalling reaction and his refusal to acknowledge me since then, and, apart from him, it went well enough.

I've gradually repurposed my blog. I'm now retired and anti gay prejudice in the market where I was self employed can no longer hurt me financially.

I am, in my quiet way, a gay rights activist. I've attended Pride parades and found them hugely emotional, or, in the case of Reading, a flop. I rarely stay silent when I see and hear homophobia, but I use judgment to consider whether speaking will have a beneficial or deleterious effect. I've made a video for the It Gets Better project. I've revealed pretty much all of myself on my personal web site.

I try to influence opinions around me not to be 'LGBT positive', but to be 'LGBT Neutral' because I despise and detest positive discrimination. And I hate bullying and bullycide even more

I'm a pretty ordinary bloke who just happens to find other pretty ordinary blokes attractive. I fell for one at school, badly and completely. That's me below, a child of the fifties, not yet even knowing what homosexuality meant, and expecting, not that I knew what it meant either, to be heterosexual.

Odd how life turns out, isn't it?