Be yourself. From the courage of coming out to the violence of Outing

Reflections by Gianni Geraci del Guado of Milan

One of the most mortifying experiences that a homosexual person can have is that of listening to someone talk about their homosexuality out of turn without perhaps having the opportunity to respond and correct the mistakes they make. And even the words that describe some aspects of our homosexuality are often wrong: just think of the systematic confusion that even those who claim to be experts in mental sciences make between homosexual orientation (which is the aptitude that a person has to experience deep emotions for for people of the same sex) and gender identity problems (which instead have to do with the way in which a person perceives himself and his body).

The majority of male homosexuals easily feel like men and the majority of lesbian women easily feel like women despite the nonsense of pseudo-experts who, when they talk about homosexuality, bring up gender identity which is instead connected to the experience of those who are transsexual, that is, those who, regardless of their sexual orientation, are unable to identify with their male or female body.


Another confusion into which those who talk about homosexuality without taking into account their ignorance fall is that between "coming out" and "outing". Commonly, in Italian, these two terms are confused and used as synonyms, but they are not the same thing.
The term “coming out” derives from the English expression: «Coming out of the closed» which, literally translated, means: «Coming out of the closet», an image which in English describes the action of a homosexual person who decides to publicly declare his homosexuality.

So I will be able to say that I "came out" to my parents when I told them that I was homosexual, just as I can say that I have no problems with "coming out" when I have no problems publicly saying that I am homosexual.
The term "outing" instead refers to the action of someone who decides to publicly denounce the homosexuality of another person who, instead, does everything to keep it hidden. It is, essentially, a gesture that has its own political value which, in the history of the homosexual movement, has been used to embarrass those public figures who, despite being homosexuals, supported discriminatory policies towards homosexuals. Since this is a practice that is very close to violating people's privacy, not everyone within the homosexual movement approves of it,
To put it with the rules of logical analysis, when "coming out" the subject is the homosexual person who publicly declares his homosexuality, while when he undergoes an "outing" the homosexual person is the object of a denunciation action carried out by someone else (who may also be homosexual, but may not be).
It is therefore incorrect to say that: «Tiziano Ferro came out by writing that he was homosexual in the first book he published». Instead, it should be said that: «Tiziano Ferro made his “coming out”, confiding his homosexual orientation in his book».

The term "outing" therefore has a much less extensive meaning than that with which it is used by many people who talk (or badmouth) homosexuality: it can be applied, for example, to the statements of Lele Mora, when he said that Fabrizio Corona he had been her lover (statements, among other things, denied by Corona himself). Unfortunately, newspapers also use the term "outing" incorrectly, perhaps because it is shorter and easier to remember. A beautiful study conducted by Giulia Tagliaferri in Nicolò Cavalli's «Le cosmicomiche» blog takes into consideration the use of the two expressions “outing” and “coming out” in the four main Italian newspapers (see http://www.linkiesta.it/blogs/le-cosmiconomiche/dentro-e-fuori-l-armado-la-differenza-tra-outing-e-coming-out) with truly depressing results: only in La Repubblica is there substantially correct usage (the error percentage is in fact 9.5%) while the other three newspapers taken into consideration have error percentages above 60% (66 .7% for La Stampa, 65.4% for Corriere della Sera, 60% for Il Sole 24 Ore)

This confusion would not be serious if "coming out" did not constitute a fundamental experience for the homosexual person. An experience in which the former American Jesuit John McNeill in his beautiful book: «Freedom, glorious freedom. A path of spirituality and liberation for homosexual believers" (Edizione Gruppo Abele, Turin, 1996) even recognizes a sacramental value, maintaining that what, for heterosexual people, is the sacrament of marriage (with which one declares to one's community the choice of live intimately with another person) for homosexual people it is "coming out" (with which one declares to one's community one's homosexual orientation and the possible choice to live intimately with a person of one's own sex).

Not talking about "coming out" means replacing this expression, so full of implications for the life of a homosexual person, with an expression that has a radically different meaning, means not respecting the painful path through which thousands of homosexual people arrive at the decision to make their "coming out", abandoning the hypocrisy in which the majority of homosexual people live to finally follow the instructions of Jesus who, in the Gospel, never condemns homosexuality, while harshly condemning any form of hypocrisy.