The issue is NOT a new one...

At the National Press Club in 1954 talking about the need for affordable quality health care for all Americans.

Who defines being "0ut"?

Last night, we saw history made on  national television.   A  credible candidate for the Presidential nomination of one of our major political parties  was asked a question we have never seen asked before,

Sitting across from MSNBC's  Rachel Maddow, (herself an out LGBT public figure.)  South Bend, Indiana Mayor, and newly declared Presidential candidate Pete Buttigeig was basically asked, why hadn't he told everybody he was gay earlier in life than he did. 

Before I get into the underlying issues  this exchange raises.  let me first say,  the question itself was not out of line,and certainly not out of line coming from Maddow.  This was going to come up sooner or later.  Clearly  Mayor Pete knew that,  and gave an incredibly thoughtful and genuine response,

I think had he been  on Meet the Press, or  Washington Week,  or even any of the other shows on liberal-friendly MSNBC,  this question would have been far more difficult to ask.   So major kudos to Rachel Maddow for asking it, and for prefacing it with some of her own coming out story.

That being said...   I will confess I still came away from watching it feeling .... annoyed.   Not with Pete Buttigieg  or with Rachel Maddow  as such.    But  with the context  that says this question had to be asked in the first place.  It smacked of the  questions  Barack Obama faced in 2007  about being Black or  "Mixed Race".     Despite Maddow's own preface and caveats, I  felt  there was an implied criticism  in her question. That by not coming out sooner Pete Buttigeig was not as "authentically gay" as Maddow.     

Rachel Maddow is  a few years younger than me.   She grew up in Northern California,, graduated from Castro Valley High School in Alameda County in the SF Bay area.  She did her undergraduate studies at  Stanford University in Palo Alto,  then (as she reveals in the interview) was the first openly Gay American Rhodes Scholar  at  Oxford University the UK.   All of  those environments have a very different relationship to the LGBT experience than the US Military or the State of Indiana

I am NOT saying that I think Maddow's journey to self acceptance as a Lesbian was less challenging as Buttigeig's as Gay man, and  I am in no way claiming any insights into Maddow's personal experience on that journey.

But, the reality is  Maddow's coming out journey took place in an environment where that process frankly is easier.  Meaning it was logistically easier to come out in Northern CA in 2005  than in central Indiana, even a decade later.

 "So why didn't you come out sooner?" , is a question many Gays and Lesbisans get asked.   I have been asked this question many times,  by well meaning  friends, and family.   The sentiment behind the question is one of love, and at times a bit of guilt..  They see how the experience of being in the closet  is such a difficult one, and worry that they somehow may have contributed to that pain,   Part of the coming out process is educating those closest to us,  that  it really had very little to do with them.  

Coming out is not just about telling your family that you are Gay, it is about first  telling  YOURSELF that you are.   That moment in front of a mirror in Sun Prairie, WI when I looked  my own reflection in the eye  and admitted  that  the prevailing social, cultural and yes,  religious expectations for the trajectory of life  were not going to pan out for me, was both liberating, and terrifying.

It would be nearly 15 years before  I would have that conversation with my own friends and  family.   And  part of that conversation was letting them know that it was never about them. 

This is a debate which has raged with in the LGBT community  for ....well  forever.    Who gets to decide what being  "out" means?  Who gets to judge when someone should come out?    Younger friends of mine who are in the midsts of the coming out process  have asked for advice. I always tell them  that  being "out" first and foremost is NOT about who you tell.  It's always first, and foremost about  how you feel. 

There is a tendency to think that a change in laws or policy is a silver bullet. It isn't.   A changed policy doesn't mean unversially changed attitudes  I have seen close up how the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"  did not suddenly make serving in the military as openly LGBT  easy or safe, or  how Anti discrimination laws didn't suddenly make being Out at work risk free.  Even if it had,   as much as I understand the question from an intellectual stand point,  my emotional reaction  was  that, coming out remains an intensely personal journey, the timing of which,  no one, not even Maddow, the "first openly Gay Rhodes Scholar"  should get to question.

Coming out for Buttigeig while in the US Navy, or even in Indiana  in 2015 was a far different proposition than for Maddow in the SF Bay Area, and Oxford in 2005. Her question, seemed to ignore that fact.

The implication  that if you are not  "Out and Loud"  before the age of 30 you are somehow doing a disservice to  the "LGBT Community" is  as dangerous and unfair an implication  as saying Barack Obama was not as connected to  the concerns of  the African American community  because he was of mixed race and grew up in Hawaii  and not some mainland inner city.

I know  that is NOT what  Rachel Maddow was implying,  and by asking the question first,  she has even done Pete Buttigeig a real favor,  pre-empting  it as a line of attack from those who will seek to make his sexual orientation the defining issue of his candidacy   Still  it's hard  not to come away from  watching that interview feeling  that the implication was there in subtext. 

There is a real tendency in Democratic Presidential primary politics to turn the process into a giant circular firing squad of  litmus tests.   Be it Kennedy's  Catholicism as a religious litmus test, Obama's relationship with his  former Pastor as a racial litmus test, or even Hillary Clinton's marriage as a feminist litmus test.    

I don't claim to speak for any constituency or group,   I am just sharing my feelings and impressions as someone who also has made this same, very  personal journey of self- acceptance.  Consequently,  I long for the day when  the process of choosing the next President of the United States is mainly about ideas  rather than identity politics.