Acts of Disclosure The Coming-Out Process of Contemporary Gay Men HAWORTH Gay & Lesbian Studies John P. De Cecco, PhD Editor in Chief New, Recent, and Forthcoming Titles: The Second Plague ofE urope: AIDS Prevention and Sexual Transmission Among Men in Western Europe by Michael Pollak The Golden Boy by James Melson Barrack Buddies and Soldier Lovers: Dialogues with Gay Young Men in the U.S. Military by Steven Zeeland Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence by Warren Johansson and William A. Percy The Bisexual Option, Second Edition by Fritz Klein And the Flag Was Still There: Straight People, Gay People, and Sexuality in the U.S. Military by Lois Shawver Sailors and Sexual Identity: Crossing the Line Between "Straight" and "Gay" in the U.S. Navy by Steven Zeeland The Gay Males Odyssey in the Corporate World: From Dise mpowerment to Empowerment by Gerald V. Miller Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, and Visions edited by Naomi Tucker Gay and Gray: The Older Homosexual Man, Second Edition by Raymond M. Berger Reviving the Tribe: Regenerating Gay Mens Sexuality and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic by Eric Rofes Gay and Lesbian Mental Health: A Sourcebook for Practitioners edited by Christopher J. Alexander Against My Better Judgment: An Intimate Memoir ofa n Eminent Gay Psychologist by Roger Brown The Masculine Marine: Homoeroticism in the U.S. Marine Corps by Steven Zeeland Bisexual Characters in Film: From Anais to Zee by Wayne M. Bryant The Bear Book: Readings in the History and Evolution ofa Gay Male Subculture edited by Les Wright Youths Living with HIV: Self-Evident Truths by G. Cajetan Luna Growth and Intimacy for Gay Men: A Workbook by Christopher J. Alexander Our Families, Our Values: Snapshots of Queer Kinship edited by Robert E. Goss and Amy Adams Squire Strongheart Gay!Lesbian!Bisexual!Transgender Public Policy Issues: A Citizens and Administrators Guide to the New Cultural Struggle edited by Wallace Swan Rough News, Daring Views: 1950s' Pioneer Gay Press Journalism by Jim Kepner Family Secrets: Gay Sons-A Mothers Story by Jean M. Baker Twenty Million New Customers: Understanding Gay Mens Consumer Behavior by Steven M. Kates The Empress Is a Man: Stories from the Life ofJ ose Sarria by Michael R. Gorman Acts ofD isclosure: The Coming-Out Process of Contemporary Gay Men by Marc E. Vargo Queer Kids: The Challenges and Promise for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth by Robert E. Owens Acts of Disclosure The Coming-Out Process of Contemporary Gay Men Marc E. Vargo, MS RO Routledge U T LED Taylor & Francis Group G E LONDON AND NEW YORK © 1998 by Marc E. Vargo. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. Reprint-2007 The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580 Note: Except when otherwise noted, names and other personal information that might identify those whose experiences are discussed herein have been modified to preserve their privacy. Also, in certain cases, examples are based on composites of individuals. Material has been reprinted with permission from the following sources: Robert L. Barret and Bryan E. Robinson, Gay Fathers. Copyright © 1990 Jossey-Bass Inc., Publish ers. First published by Lexington Books. All rights reserved. R. Troiden, "Becoming homosexual: A model of gay identity acquisition," Psychiatry: Interper sonal and Biological Process, Vol. 42. Copyright © 1979 by The Guilford Press. F. Bozett, "Gay fathers: Evolution of gay-father identity," American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 51(3). Copyright © 1981 by the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Griffin, Carolyn Welch, Marion J. Wirth, and Arthur G. Wirth, Beyond Acceptance: Parents ofL es bians and Gays Talk About Their Experience. Copyright© 1996 by Carolyn Welch Griffin, Marian J. Wirth, and Arthur G. Wirth. Published by St. Martin's Press Incorporated. Zeeland, Steve, Barrack Buddies and Soldier Lovers. Copyright © 1993, and Volumes 14, 18( 112), 22, and 22(3) of the Journal ofH omosexuality. Published by The Haworth Press. Cover design by Monica Seifert. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vargo, Marc. Acts of disclosure : the coming-out process of contemporary gay men I Marc E. Vargo. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7890-0236-1 (alk. paper) I. Coming out (Sexual orientation)---United States. 2. Gay men-United States----Psychol ogy. 3. Gay men-United States----Family relationships. 4. Gay men-Employment-United States. I. Title. HQ76.3.U5V37 1998 305.38'9664--dc21 97-13389 CIP To Michael Walker, with love ABOUT THE AUTHOR Marc E. Vargo, MS, is a staff member in the Department of Psychology at Hammond Developmental Center in Hammond, Lou isiana, where he works with impaired individuals and serves as Chairperson of the Institutional Review Board. An activist in the gay community of New Orleans, he has contributed his services to the New Orleans AIDS Task Force, a nonprofit AIDS service orga nization, since 1987. As an HIV Counselor with the Task Force, he has served as Co-Chairperson of its HIV Testing and Counseling Program and has facilitated several support groups for gay men who are HIV-positive. In 1992, he wrote a book titled The HIV Test: What You Need to Know to Make an Informed Decision, which was published and distributed in English-speaking nations by Simon & Schuster (PocketBooks Division) and licensed and translated into Japanese by the DHC Corporation, Tokyo. The author of several journal articles on topics related primarily to anxiety, his work has appeared in Cortex, the British Journal of Medical Psychology, the Journal of the American Academy ofB ehavioral Medicine, and the Journal of Clinical Psychology. CONTENTS Foreword ix Rep. Barney Frank Introduction xv Chapter 1. The Coming-Out Process 1 The Origins of Homosexuality 2 Stage 1: The Pre-Coming-Out Years 7 Stage 2: Coming Out to Oneself 22 Stage 3: Exploration and Experimentation 27 Stage 4: Coming Out to Others 30 Stage 5: Commitment and Integration 32 Suggestions 34 Chapter 2. The Family Sphere: Gay Sons, Husbands, and Fathers 37 Reasons for Not Telling the Family 38 Telling One's Parents 45 Telling One's Wife 58 Telling One's Children 71 Suggestions 79 Chapter 3. The Professional Sphere: Coming Out in the Workplace 83 Elementary and Secondary Education 84 The Sciences 92 Business and Industry 96 The Military 108 Current Trends 114 Suggestions 116 Chapter 4. The Public Sphere: Managing Widespread Exposure 119 The Public Crucible 119 Outing and Its Effects 120 The Decision to Go Public 130 Suggestions 137 Appendix. Coming-Out Resources 139 The Family 139 The Workplace 140 HIV Prevention and Treatment 142 Legal Concerns 142 Religious Issues 144 Notes 147 Bibliography 153 Index 159 Foreword To say that my decision to acknowledge publicly that I am gay was the right decision for me to have made is an example of some thing people rarely see: a politician engaging in a gross understate ment of the facts. Acknowledging publicly that I was gay was the second best decision I have ever made in my life, and in fact, it was the prerequi site to the best decision I ever made-that being to commit to spending my life in a domestic partnership with Herb Moses. I say that coming out was the prerequisite because it was as a conse quence of my having made the decision to come out that I met Herb. He is a man of great integrity, among other assets, and he would not have been interested in a relationship of any sort with someone who was trying to live half in the closet and half out. We met when he sent me a note of congratulations on my public coming out, and he has enriched my life for the past ten years. I had been agonizing for some time over whether to acknowledge publicly my sexual orientation. I had lived the life of a very closeted gay man, complicated by the fact that I was a politician with a very public persona. Unfortunately, it was a dishonest public persona. By the time I was in my mid-thirties, I had stopped pretending to be straight, but I was not acknowledging that I was gay. What I was was miserable. When I got to Congress in 1981, at the age of forty-one, I thought I could prove that Abraham Lincoln was wrong, at least as regards an individual, and that I could live half slave and half free. That is, I decided I would continue to enslave myself to homophobia by fail ing to live as a gay man in my public life, while in fact living freely and honestly in my private life. That simply does not work. The tensions, conflicts, evasions, etc., inherent in that effort to live a double life instead caused me to make a couple of stupid mistakes in my personal life while turning up the stress level that interfered with my ability to accomplish my public goals. ix