My “Coming Out” Felt More Like “Inviting In”

I was 20 years old before I told anyone else in my life that I had gender dysphoria. Or, as I said back then, “all these gender feelings.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell anyone. Throughout many different seasons of my childhood and teen years, I’d tried to write letters and speeches to tell my parents and friends what I’d been experiencing. From what I’d absorbed in media, though, “coming out” was a dramatic proclamation. My understanding was that it meant you were confidently displaying your “true self” to the world—being “brave,” letting your flag fly, making a grand statement that said, “I’m here, this is me, and you’ve gotta deal with it.” To be sure, many people do not think about coming out this way—and in the years since that time, I’ve been moved by countless examples of coming out that occurred in gentler, more intimate ways. But that was what I had internalized then.

Where did our contemporary “coming out” language begin? The origins of the term in the queer community go back to the early 20th century, when it referred to entering the gay subculture in cities like New York. Over the ensuing decades, coming out became less about subculture and more about the public willingness to identify oneself as gay, particularly during a repressive era when such public identification (or “outing”) often came at tremendous social cost. Eventually, National Coming Out Day was inaugurated in 1988.

“Coming out” language has been and continues to be helpful in many ways. At its peak, it showed the world that queer folks lived alongside them everywhere—and we have generations of courageous advocates to thank for our present reality, where these things are often encouraged rather than widely scorned. Still, when I actually began sharing my story with the people I cared about, I realized quickly that “coming out” was only part of the picture for me. Especially as a person of faith, I wanted to find a way of navigating the journey that was driven less by proclamations and more by relationship. I wanted to find something that felt more like setting a table.

“Inviting in”

My personal journey from a private struggle to a day-to-day reality began mainly with my parents. When the two of them found out about my gender dysphoria, they were initially shocked and struggled to reconcile it with their faith—but they were overwhelmingly loving from the outset, eventually desiring to learn as much as they could about trans experience. And with their support and prayerfulness, I was able to discern the way to tell other people who might be less receptive, particularly our extended family.

As I talked and processed with my parents about the best way to tell my grandparents, one word continued surfacing for us: invitation. In sharing with them, we knew that we wanted to create some space for them to feel and process, and eventually ask some questions. But more than that, I wanted them to know that I was telling them this news because I loved and cared about them, and I desired for us to know each other fully. I was not making a mere announcement, asserting newsworthy information about my identity for their approval or disapproval. I was inviting them into the reality of my story, and asking them to be part of it.

READ MORE: Queer Folk Have a Faith that the Church Should Admire

The notion of “inviting in” as an alternative to “coming out” has been sporadically discussed by academics and advocates within queer subculture for some time now; a quick Google search will reveal a few compelling thinkpieces and TED Talks about the phrase. For most proponents, the argument is simple: where “coming out” asks queer folks to put themselves out there in potentially hostile territory, “inviting in” keeps things on our terms and makes it clear that we have the agency to thoughtfully choose who we invite. I think that’s all very compelling. For me, though, “inviting in” language has served more than just a pragmatic rhetorical purpose. A major reason I have found it to be so valuable is that invitation is inherently linked to the theological richness of hospitality.

“You’ll always be my grandchild”

Inviting my grandparents into my story was something that took months of thought and prayer. My parents and I chose a particular time to get together that was far removed from the pandemonium of the holidays—and prepared the family that I had something important to share. Intent on choosing my words carefully, I had workshopped a lengthy letter to read aloud, with my mom and dad offering thoughts about the questions their parents would have and the ways I could dispel certain misconceptions and fears up front. The content of my letter was less about my identity and more about my experience: I reminded them of memories we all shared from my childhood, and hard things that had stuck with me which they may have never known; I told them about the difficult romantic relationships I’d endured and what I’d learned through them; I talked about my periods of spiritual wrestling and my ongoing relationship with God; I asked them to tread lightly and avoid offering unsolicited advice. And I told them how much I loved them, too.

I want to be careful in sharing this story not to make a rigid blueprint out of my own personal experience. Everyone who claims faith in Christ is called to be compassionate, but not everyone is necessarily called to extend the same diplomacy I’ve described here. There are many times that queer folks understandably do not want to bring their families or religious communities into the intimate process of their self-revelation, for fear of aggressive external pressure, vitriolic judgment, or even physical safety. I also want to emphasize that queer people should not be solely responsible for perfectly modulating our language so that our families and friends support rather than reject us; other people have a responsibility to love and listen, too.

Still, what I’ve sometimes observed for myself and my queer friends is that the families presented suddenly with a loved one “coming out” can be left feeling like their only role is to promptly voice a binary “reaction” or a “stance”—affirming or not affirming, for or against. For some families, even generally compassionate ones, if a queer person tactlessly delivers the information, it can lead to a similar hardness in the way their family responds.

But can we entirely blame queer folks for occasionally clumsy, even guarded communication? The conventional wisdom about “coming out” often unintentionally positions queerness as a deep, dark secret that is being thrust into the open, putting queer folks on the defensive rather than allowing us to come from a place of relational desire. Instead of reaching out for connection, we’ve been taught by a cruel world that we must expect rejection and armor ourselves against it. Sometimes this is unavoidably true. But it also has a tendency to backfire: It makes the outsider’s “reaction” or “stance” the focal point of the conversation, rather than focusing on bringing them into our story.

Queer hospitality

This is what makes “inviting in” different: it allows and empowers queer folks to share things out of desire rather than obligation, and it bestows other people with a sense of responsibility by asking them to enter and attend to the conversation with the utmost care.

This is what makes “inviting in” different: it allows and empowers queer folks to share things out of desire rather than obligation, and it bestows other people with a sense of responsibility by asking them to enter and attend to the conversation with the utmost care.

For my grandparents’ part, the response was overwhelmingly and miraculously understanding and kind. My grandmother told me, “You’ll always be my grandchild,” and suddenly it felt like all was right with the world. We all cried a bit together, including my parents, who were touched by the depth of empathy they’d witnessed from their own parents. I answered a few of their biggest questions. And ultimately, it felt like there was a palpable gratitude that we’d personally brought them into this story with thoughtfulness, vulnerability, and intention.

Hospitality is a gift that we extend freely to others without a need for reciprocation or payment, just as the gospel is extended to us regardless of whether we choose to receive it. Still, anyone who has been the beneficiary of generous hospitality (as I certainly have) knows that such receiving often breeds overwhelming gratitude—good hospitality makes you want to be a good guest! We may not feel pressured to transactionally pay back our debt, but we are motivated to continue the relationship with a greater calling to be generous and hospitable in return.

It only dawned on me later that by choosing the time, setting boundaries, and sharing something beautiful and vulnerable, I had acted with hospitality toward my grandparents—and they had received it gracefully.

READ MORE: Your Church’s Liturgy Can Honor Trans Lives

“Inviting in” asks and enables queer folks to become generous hosts, which is a major responsibility—one that not everyone has the strength for, but some may feel called toward. The flipside, however, is that “inviting in” asks the people we welcome into our story to be gracious guests—appreciating our courage, respecting our right to share and not share, and attending rather than reacting. “Inviting in” turns “coming out” into something inherently relational, telling the people we care about that we have chosen to vulnerably open up about our story because we want them to be part of it. By cultivating the guest-host relationship, it offers both parties a role to play.

Answering the invitation and “entering in” may not mean immediate acceptance or a lack of wrestling on the part of the guest. Part of being a guest is the simultaneous comfort and dissonance of sojourning in a place that is not your own, and new surroundings can take some adjustment no matter how gracious the host might be. “Inviting in” also doesn’t rule out the possibility that someone might turn down the invitation, reject the gift, or refuse the call. But it does give them the opportunity to answer it, and a real and present purpose in their answering. Both parties have the potential to benefit from the reciprocity.

***

This past June, a dear friend of mine hosted her own party to share an intimate part of her story with her closest friends: that she is bisexual. Growing up in a conservative religious school that explicitly banned queer students, she’d never felt safe to share that reality with anyone until recently. In practice, she reached out to all of us before the party to gently share the important details, and told us that we could ask questions or learn more when we were together on the night.

Boldly, she asked us all if we might be willing to write and bring cards with encouragement or kindness for her to hold onto. And the whole thing ended up being a delightful evening: there were rainbow fruit snacks, tender words, a time of sharing and questions, and a group watch of one of her favorite movies. It was a celebration of everything we loved about her as a person and the privilege to know her more—and it was something she had planned and hosted herself, out of pure desire to be held by her community. She called it her “Coming Out & Inviting In” party. Not everyone at that party was straightforwardly or loudly “affirming” in the textbook sense, at least right now. But everyone was vocally grateful to have been included and entrusted with this story, and the guests and the host left feeling respected, loved, and welcomed.

Looking back at my childhood self, wrestling in silence with the expectation of making a grand announcement, I wish I’d been able to envision a humble little party like this. Our stories and identities are more than just a simple verdict announced to a courtroom; they are a bountiful feast, prepared with care for the people we love. When we exchange the pressure of a public proclamation for the intimacy of an invitation, we offer those around us a meaningful gift: a place to sit, a role to play, and a way to attend and belong together.