Today is National Coming Out Day. Coming out of the closet is a powerful personal and political act. I highly recommend it.

Later this year, I will celebrate ten years of being out (and, I suppose I'm obligated to add, fabulous). I'll tell that saga on my coming out anniversary.

I'll say this, though: my current Congressman, Jim Kolbe, and I both came out in the same year. He of course was forced out while I had the opportunity to come to have that revelation on my own. He was well into middle age and a powerful elected official representing southeastern Arizona. I was a naive, lonely college Freshman in upstate New York. He was a self-proclaimed "moderate" in a Republican party that was drifting far to the right. I was a registered Democrat with an intuitive but subliminal appreciation for progressive politics who grew up in a pretty conservative slice of New Jersey farm country.

I point all this out for no other reason than to establish that LGBT people come from every walk of life. We come out for many different reasons. But every time we come out (and it's not just once, it's a lifelong process), we make a powerful statement that we won't live in fear, that we will be true to ourselves, and that we are everywhere. Many of us who have been out for awhile forget this. Our sexual orientations and gender identities are just small pieces of our many-faceted lives.

In other words, I'm here, I'm queer, I'm over it. But at least I'm out.