Our visibility requires our vigilance
Sure, we have marriage equality (for now). Sure, there are queer characters (and an almost bracing comfort level with queer sexuality) on TV and in movies. Sure, the rainbow colors have never been more popular (and almost co-opted at this point.)
“Sure, Jan,” to quote Marcia Brady. Or as a friend of mine likes to say, “Don’t let the smooth taste fool you.”
We may have won some battles, but we’re still in the middle of a war. And it may not be a war of our choosing, but that’s kinda how wars work. It’s far from over. Not even close, sadly. Here’s why.
Coming out has never been only about announcing who you love or who you are. It’s so much more: It’s a declaration that you refuse to disappear. And in 2026, with forces across this nation working hard to make LGBTQ+ people disappear, that declaration is more radical, more dangerous, and more holy than it has been in a generation.
National Coming Out Day was born in 1988, one year after half a million people marched on Washington for lesbian and gay rights. It was a time of funerals. AIDS was taking our friends, I was doing five to six funerals a month for our lovers, our hidden family members and chosen family, while too many politicians and pulpits shrugged or, worse, called it judgment.
The founders of this day understood something brutal and beautiful: Hate thrives in the dark. It is easy to legislate against an abstraction. It is far harder to legislate against your neighbor, your coworker, your grandchild, or the person who sings next to you in the choir.
So, they asked us to come out. Not because it was safe. Because silence was killing us.
Why coming out is a marathon, not a sprint
Nearly four decades later, I find myself asking a very pointed question. Have we forgotten that lesson? Or did we simply hope we would never need it again?
Let’s be transparent about the climate we’re living in.
In recent years, state legislatures have introduced hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills, year after year after year. Laws banning books with queer characters. Laws forbidding teachers from saying the word “gay” in a classroom. Laws stripping transgender young people of medical care that their doctors, their parents, and they themselves agreed was right for them. Laws that try to erase transgender and nonbinary people from official documents, from sports, from bathrooms, from public life itself.
This isn’t about policy debates. This is about whether some of God’s children get to exist in the open.
And the pressure doesn’t stop at statehouse doors. It shows up in school board meetings where parents scream at librarians. It shows up in threats against Pride events and drag story hours. It shows up in the quiet withdrawal of corporate support, as companies that once sold us rainbow merchandise decide we are suddenly too “controversial.” It shows up in the voice of a young person who whispers, Maybe I should just wait until things calm down.
I understand that instinct. I truly do. Every one of us who has ever stood at the threshold of the closet knows the arithmetic of fear. Who will I lose? Will I be safe at home? Will I keep my job? Will my church still welcome me?
But here is a harsh reality we must face together:
The closet doesn’t protect us from a culture determined to erase us. It only makes the erasing easier.
There is a lie that whispers to every marginalized community in times like these. It says, Keep your head down. Don’t make waves. If you stay quiet, maybe they’ll leave you alone.
History has a word for that lie. It is called compliance.
Silence has never saved us. Silence did not stop the police raids on our bars. Silence did not stop the firings, the purges of gay federal workers, the conversion “therapies,” the forced psychiatric commitments. Silence did not stop the virus or the leaders who let it spread. What changed the tide, every single time, was people refusing to hide.
When Harvey Milk urged gay people to come out, he understood that every closet door that opened was a crack in the wall of prejudice. People who claim they don’t know anyone queer find it remarkably easy to vote against us. But for people whose daughter, best friend or pastor is queer? They begin to hesitate. They begin to ask questions. And all too often, gloriously, they change.
Visibility isn’t vanity. Visibility is strategy. Visibility is survival.
I need you to read this next part closely, because it isn’t a metaphor.
Coming out is how we find our allies
Research from The Trevor Project has shown again and again that LGBTQ+ young people who have even one accepting adult in their lives are significantly less likely to attempt suicide. One. One teacher. One aunt. One youth minister. One neighbor who flies a rainbow flag on the porch and means it.
Think about what that means. Every time an LGBTQ+ adult lives openly, a young person somewhere sees proof that a future is possible. Every out nurse, out plumber, out grandmother, out deacon becomes a lighthouse for some kid lost in the fog of shame.
I think of the teenagers sitting in pews right now, hearing sermons that tell them they are broken. I think of the trans girl in a small town who has never once seen a woman like her grow old in peace. I think of the bisexual man told he is “confused,” the lesbian elder who buried her partner of forty years and was listed on the paperwork as “friend.”
Who is speaking to them? Who is showing them they belong?
We are. When we come out, we are.
For those of us in communities of faith, this day carries an even deeper weight.
Anyone who says God isn’t on our side is a blasphemer
So many LGBTQ+ people have been told that God requires their silence. That holiness means hiding. That the price of a seat at the table is pretending to be someone else.
I reject that false prophecy with every fiber of my being. It is what causes my colleagues to say I am a radical heretic. As if I care about their opinions.
Think of the stories that shaped so many of our traditions. Moses, slow of speech, sent anyway to stand in the capital of an empire before Pharaoh. Esther, risking everything to reveal who she was to the king, because perhaps she was born “for such a time as this.” The man born blind, healed and then interrogated by religious authorities, who refused to deny his own experience: “One thing I do know. I was blind, but now I see.” David, whose love for Jonathan “surpassed that of a woman.”
These are coming-out stories. They are stories of people who were told to stay small, and chose instead to stand fully in the truth of who they were created to be.
To come out is to say, I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and I will not apologize for the craftsmanship. That is not rebellion against the Divine. That is worship.
And to every congregation that claims to be welcoming: this is your moment of truth. Is your welcome a sign on the lawn, or a promise you are willing to keep when it gets costly?
Dear allies: We need you more than ever
The rest of this is specifically for our allies, because National Coming Out Day is not only for LGBTQ+ people.
You have a closet too. It’s the closet of comfortable silence. The one where you agree with us privately but say nothing at the dinner table, nothing at work, nothing when your state representative votes to strip away our rights.
It’s time to come out of that closet.
Say it out loud: I love and support my LGBTQ+ siblings. Put your pronouns in your email signature. Show up at the school board meeting. Call your legislators. Push your faith community to go beyond tolerance into real celebration. Volunteer with organizations that shelter queer youth who were kicked out of their homes. Use your safety, your privilege, and your voice to build safety for those who have less.
Allyship is so much more than a feeling. It’s a verb. And in 2026, it is a verb with greater consequences.
Now I want to say something with great care and compassion to another part of our community.
If you are not safe to come out right now, because of your family, your finances, your immigration status, your health, or your physical safety, you are not a failure. You are not a coward. You are not less a part of this community. Your survival is sacred. No one is owed your story before you are ready to tell it.
This day is not a demand. It’s a promise. It’s millions of us saying, We are clearing the path. We are making the world safer, one open door at a time, so that when you are ready, there will be a whole community waiting with open arms.
And until then, we see you. We’re holding space for you. You’re already one of us.
Why coming out will never go out of style
So here is where we stand in 2026. The forces of fear are organized, funded, and loud. They are counting on us to grow tired. They are counting on us to retreat. They are counting on the closet to swallow a new generation whole.
We must ask ourselves: Will we let them?
I keep coming back to a simple question: What kind of world do we want to hand to the queer and trans kids being born this very year? A world where they learn to hide before they learn to read? Or a world where they look around and see us everywhere, in every profession, every pew, every family photo, every corner of public life, unashamed and unafraid?
That world doesn’t arrive on its own. We build it. Out loud.
They have tried laws. They have tried shame. They have tried scripture twisted into a weapon. They have tried erasing us from books, from classrooms, from history itself.
And still, here we are.
We were here before their bills. We will be here long after their bills are dust. We have survived plagues, purges, police raids, and pulpits that preached our damnation. We buried our dead and then we marched. We were told to whisper and we learned to sing.
So this October 11, if you are able, open the door. Say your name. Speak your truth. Let them see you.
Because here is what they will never understand:
You cannot legislate us out of existence. You cannot pray us out of existence. You cannot silence us out of existence. We are not going back into the closet. We are burning it down and building a sanctuary from the ashes.
We are here. We have always been here. And we are not going anywhere.
And until the day comes when every person can live openly without fear, love without apology, worship without exclusion, work without discrimination, and exist without having to defend their own humanity, we will keep showing up.
We will keep telling our stories. We will keep widening the table. We will keep opening doors.
And we will keep saying loudly enough for the whole world to hear:
No one should have to hide in order to belong. Not in 1988. Not in 2026. Not in 2088.
We’re here. We’ve always been here. And we’re not going anywhere.
Editor-in-Chief of Whosoever and Founding and Senior Pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church of Atlanta, Rev. Paul M. Turner (he/him) grew up in suburban Chicago and was ordained by the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1989. He and his husband Bill have lived in metro Atlanta since 1994, have been in a committed partnership since the early 1980s and have been legally married since 2015.