Today is National Coming Out Day. From Wikipedia:
National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is an internationally observed civil awareness day celebrating individuals who publicly identify as bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender—coming out regarding one’s sexual orientation and/or gender identity being akin to a cultural rite of passage for LGBT people. The day is observed annually by members of the LGBT community and allies on October 11.
NCOD was founded in 1988 by Robert Eichberg, a psychologist from New Mexico and founder of the personal growth workshop, The Experience, and Jean O’Leary, an openly gay political leader from Los Angeles and then head of the National Gay Rights Advocates. The date of October 11 was chosen because it was the anniversary of the 1987 National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights.
One of many posters created for the occasion, this one offering a portmanteau:
Earlier postings here on the occasion. From 2010, with an explanation of the personal significance of the day:
National Coming Out Day (October 11) … is a big thing in my house because that’s the date Jacques and I chose to be our anniversary. (When you don’t actually get married, you’re free to choose a suitable date. We thought about the date of our most important domestic partnership, in Palo Alto, but that was Valentine’s Day, which is also my daughter’s birthday. We considered the day we first declared our love for one another, and made love, but that date comes in between Christmas and New Year’s, an already crowded time of the year. So we cast about for other possibilities and came up with NCOD, which suited us both.)
From 2011, with a Keith Haring poster. And from 2012, with a discussion of various senses of gay.
