So...

[ShadowHM]

I will never know what it's like to "come out" to your friends, but I suspect that in a way it's similar to professing Christian beliefs on a Diablo forum.

Nystul, I don't want to belittle your belief system. You are as entitled to it as I am to mine. But that statement makes it obvious that you really don't understand the dangers in 'coming out'.

Similar? Maybe, in that you expose yourself to ridicule. But a Diablo forum is not where you live. It is a small community that is only peripheral to your 'real life'. It is part of where you play, not where you live.

Coming out can mean, as Ashael recounted, losing your friends completely. It can mean physical harm to go with the emotional harm of losing your support system. It can be a profoundly shattering thing.

Depending on the family background involved, it can be worse than losing friends. It can mean utter rejection from your family too, as Ashkael fears.

The young man I referred to in my response to DeeBye's 'generalization' has struggled and will continue to struggle, I fear, with profound depression. He comes from a devout Muslim family where his parents expect to choose a spouse for him in due course. He has tried to broach the topic and met a brick wall of denial, which he admits is better than what he thinks would take place if they believed him. He is an amazingly high achiever in academics. He tries so hard to be perfect in every way for them, and he knows that he cannot ever compensate for what they will go through if and when they acknowledge that he is a homosexual.

I do hope you will never know what it is like. But don't trivialize it by comparing it to what you deal with as a professed Christian posting in a Diablo forum.