COVER STORY
Ohio Comes Out
The state’s LGBTQ+ share their coming out stories. By Kaylee Duff In honor of LGBT History Month and National Coming Out Day (Oct. 11), we’ve collected stories about coming out from the LGBTQ+ community throughout Ohio. Why are stories like these so important? Because they are us. All coming out stories are special, and our stories are just as diverse as we are. They are happy, sad, joyful, scary, astonishing — and all of them are brave, in their own ways. It’s about celebrating the living history of our lives, and recognizing that every one of us is part of something beautiful.
John Sherman Lathram-Brungs My coming out story probably is not different than most kids who were born in the early ‘60s. When I was born, the “revolution” had not happened yet. Being gay was still considered a crime and a mental disorder. We had the likes of Anita Bryant, an evangelical Christian, convincing the majority of Americans that homosexuality was a detriment to the institution of family and marriage.
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I was lucky to have the family that I had. I grew up showing dogs and started grooming dogs when I was only seven years old. That profession has a large number of gay individuals so I had a large group of older gay men as role models. That said, growing up in the suburbs of Columbus as one who could not relate to girls in a heteronormal way was difficult for me. My mother nick-named me Jay and all through school, I was tormented with the name Gay-Jay. High school was dreadful for me. I was teased and tormented daily, except for when I was in choir. Being in musicals, singing and dancing were my respite from the everyday torment I would get from classmates. I was an extremely short, skinny awkward kid who wore glasses and kept a high grade point average. I didn’t identify as gay at this point in my life as I wasn’t sexually mature, but I related to other boys my age as knowing I liked cute, pretty or handsome boys as friends. I was barely out of high school when I had my first sexual experience with a girl a year younger than I. It wasn’t a horrible experience but the relationship felt empty for me.
As I look back on things, I was in denial that I was gay into my very early 20s. My parents, friends and associates all knew I was gay and accepted me for it, long before I was comfortable as identifying as gay. I spent a good deal of my early adulthood being self destructive because I could not accept the fact that I was gay. Even in the ‘80s, gay individuals could not be “out and proud,” as we now say in the Midwest. I honestly don’t know why I was so hard on myself early on, but when I attended my first gay pride event, which also happened to be Columbus’s first Pride Parade in 1981, I discovered others who were like me. As we get older, we find ourselves coming out many times. We come out to friends first usually, then family and then professionally. When I sought a position on the North Linden Area Commission and introduced my husband to the rest of the commission, I did it with a degree of trepidation, knowing that I was probably the first openly gay individual and wasn’t sure of the support and acceptance we would get. This year, I was nominated by my peers to receive the Steve Shellabarger Illuminator TRUE Q MAGAZINE
