Today in Sex: It's National Coming Out Day

The last few months have been fairly horrifying for humanity. Politicians seem to have given up on kissing babies to garner votes and are instead busting out homophobic hate speech to curry favor. It seems like we lose another young gay kid to suicide every week. And the recent spate of unspeakable acts of violence perpetrated against people just because they choose to love someone of the same sex would be heartbreaking if it weren't so rage-inducing.

Which is why National Coming Out Day is more important than ever.

But as bad, intolerant, and hateful as things have been lately, there are signs that things might be looking up. Last week, Connecticut said yes to gay marriage and the hatemongers are being outted as the loonies they are. The upswing in hate seems to be mobilizing liberals who have been in retreat for far too long. Compassion is becoming cool.

So to honor Coming Out Day (which is also celebrated in the UK, Poland, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, and Croatia), consider some of the following:

• Help at-risk LGBT youth by giving some money to the Trevor Project.
• Check out this round-up of National Coming Out Day stories.
• Human Rights Watch has an entire section devoted to LBGT rights.
• Boing Boing covers the world LGBT science geeks!
• Sing if you're glad to be gay. Written and performed by Tom Robinson in the 70s, "Glad to be Gay" was the first gay protest song. Well, the first mainstream one anyway. As Robinson points out, you don't have to be gay to sing along (though it helps).