I Never Tried to Fit Into the LGBTQ+ Community. Somehow, I Finally Found My Place.

By August Quinn | October 2026

October is LGBTQ+ History Month. National Coming Out Day falls right in the middle of it. And after 25 years of being out, I've come to a rather unexpected realization: I think I finally found my people.

Which is funny, considering I spent most of those 25 years making absolutely no effort to find them.

Not because I was ashamed. Not because I was hiding. And certainly not because I was sitting around desperately trying to convince the world I was heterosexual.

Trust me. That ship sailed, hit an iceberg, caught fire, and sank sometime around the turn of the millennium.

I simply never felt the need to belong to the LGBTQ+ community.

I was me.

I liked who I liked. Loved who I loved. Lived how I wanted to live. And if someone had a problem with that, they were welcome to file a complaint with the Department of Things I Couldn't Possibly Care Less About.

For most of my adult life, that worked beautifully.

But somewhere between turning 50, losing people I loved, finding my faith again, and realizing that life is entirely too short to spend explaining myself to strangers, something changed.

For the first time, I'm not just comfortable being queer.

I'm comfortable belonging.

And those are two very different things.

I Came Out. I Didn't Join a Club.

I first came out in September 2001.

Yes, that September.

The world was still reeling from September 11, and somewhere in the middle of a national tragedy, I was having a personal reckoning that would change the direction of my life.

Not exactly ideal timing for a major identity announcement.

But life has never consulted my calendar before scheduling a crisis.

I came out, and then I went about living.

There was no rainbow-themed reinvention. No dramatic announcement that I was suddenly a different person. No immediate desire to surround myself with people who shared my sexuality.

I didn't suddenly develop an interest in Pride parades, gay bars, or community organizations.

I was still the same sarcastic, opinionated, occasionally insufferable person I'd been the day before.

I just stopped pretending that the gender of the person I might fall in love with was something other people were entitled to approve.

And that was enough for me.

I never felt compelled to prove I belonged anywhere.

In fact, I've spent most of my life being spectacularly bad at fitting in.

I've been the guy who questioned the teacher in religion class. The person who challenged authority when authority made absolutely no sense. The one who looked at an established tradition and asked, "But why?"

A question that, I discovered very early, religious institutions do not always appreciate.

Apparently, "Because that's the way it's always been" was supposed to be a complete answer.

Who knew?

I Didn't Fit the Stereotype. So I Stopped Looking for One.

Here's something we don't talk about enough.

Sometimes, even within communities built around acceptance, there's an unspoken expectation about what belonging is supposed to look like.

How you're supposed to dress. Who you're supposed to date. What you're supposed to believe. Which labels you're supposed to use.

And I have never been particularly good at following a script.

I've loved men. I've loved women. I've had relationships that defined entire chapters of my life, and others that should have come with a warning label and a mandatory cancellation policy.

I spent seven years loving a Marine at a time when the military still operated under Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

I married a woman I loved deeply and built a life with her for twelve years before losing her in 2020.

None of those relationships canceled out the others.

They were different people, different kinds of love, and different chapters of the same life.

Yet I've encountered people who seemed to need a neat little category to explain all of it.

Gay?

Straight?

Bisexual?

Pansexual?

Could we possibly get a flowchart?

For years, my answer was essentially that I didn't need a label.

I still don't.

But these days, when someone asks, I generally use queer.

Not because it perfectly explains every dimension of my identity, but because it doesn't try to.

It's broad. It's complicated. It leaves room for the person I've been, the person I am, and whoever the hell I turn into next.

And frankly, after 50 years, I've earned the right not to come with an instruction manual.

The Strange Loneliness of Being Comfortable With Yourself

Here's the part that took me years to understand.

You can be completely comfortable with your sexuality and still feel disconnected from the community that supposedly represents you.

For me, being out was never the same thing as being involved.

I wasn't avoiding LGBTQ+ spaces out of fear. I just wasn't seeking them out.

My friends were my friends. My relationships were my relationships. My world was built around people I loved, work, family, community service, and whatever fresh disaster required my attention that week.

I never thought I was missing anything.

And maybe, at the time, I wasn't.

But there's a subtle difference between being accepted by the people in your life and being surrounded by people who understand an experience without requiring you to explain it.

It's the difference between someone saying, "I support you," and someone saying, "Oh, honey. Been there."

Both matter.

But one comes with a kind of recognition that can be difficult to describe until you've experienced it.

For much of my adult life, I didn't realize how much energy I'd spent being the exception in the room.

The queer guy in a traditionally straight environment.

The man who had loved another man but married a woman.

The person who didn't fit neatly into anyone's assumptions.

I wasn't necessarily uncomfortable.

I was just accustomed to being different.

And when being different becomes your normal, you don't always notice how exhausting it can be.

Then I Turned 50, and Apparently My Give-a-Damn Expired.

I don't know what it is about reaching 50, but something shifts.

Maybe it's maturity.

Maybe it's wisdom.

Maybe it's the realization that half the people whose opinions once mattered to you are no longer in your life, and the other half are too busy dealing with their own nonsense to care what you're doing.

Whatever it is, I've found myself becoming more open to things I once dismissed.

And surprisingly, one of those things is community.

Over the past couple of years, I've started paying closer attention to LGBTQ+ organizations, advocacy, conversations, and the people working to make the world a little less hostile for those who come after us.

I've become more interested in showing up.

Not because I suddenly need validation.

But because I've started recognizing the value of being present.

Of being counted.

Of sharing experiences with people who understand them.

Of being part of something that extends beyond my individual life.

Perhaps most importantly, I've realized that the LGBTQ+ community isn't some exclusive club with a secret handshake, a mandatory dance routine, and a rainbow entrance exam.

It's people.

Messy, complicated, opinionated, beautiful, occasionally ridiculous people.

People with wildly different experiences, beliefs, backgrounds, and personalities.

People I don't always agree with.

People who don't always agree with me.

In other words, a community.

And I've spent enough years involved in volunteer organizations to know that no community is complete without at least one person who argues over the bylaws.

I may have finally found my calling.

Finding God Without Having to Hide Myself

One of the most unexpected parts of this journey has been my relationship with faith.

For years, religion was one of the places where I felt least welcome.

I grew up Catholic. I served as an altar boy. I attended religious education classes, where I developed the apparently radical habit of asking questions.

Why couldn't women become priests?

Why couldn't priests marry?

Why was loving someone of the same sex treated as something fundamentally wrong?

Those questions didn't always go over particularly well.

Eventually, I learned that some religious environments preferred obedience to curiosity.

And when I came out, the message from certain corners of the Church became painfully clear.

There were people who believed my sexuality was something to condemn, not understand.

One monsignor, a man who had known me for much of my life, made it clear that he had serious moral objections to my relationships with men. Years later, when I was preparing to marry, he would not perform the ceremony.

Imagine being told that your capacity to love made you morally unsuitable for a religious blessing.

That kind of experience stays with you.

Not necessarily because you believe what was said.

But because you wonder how an institution that speaks so frequently about love can struggle so profoundly with actually practicing it.

For a long time, I separated myself from organized religion.

Then, in 2024, a friend dragged me into a Presbyterian church.

Technically, I was there to take pictures for a website.

Apparently, God had a different job description in mind.

I found a congregation that didn't require me to leave part of myself at the door.

I found a pastor who challenged me to think rather than simply obey.

I found people who saw my sexuality as one aspect of my humanity, not a problem requiring correction.

In January 2025, I chose to be baptized again.

Not because I was rejecting who I had been.

But because, for the first time in a very long time, I felt that my faith and my identity could exist in the same room without somebody demanding that one of them leave.

I became a deacon. I became involved in the life of the church. Eventually, I became part of its staff.

And there's something beautifully ironic about that.

The kid who was once told his questions and sexuality made him unwelcome in religious spaces grew up to become a church leader.

Apparently, God has a sense of humor.

And excellent timing.

That experience taught me something important about belonging.

The right community doesn't ask you to become someone else before making room for you.

It simply makes room.

I've Started Understanding Why Visibility Matters

For years, I approached being out as something intensely personal.

My life. My relationships. My business.

And I still believe that no one owes the world a public declaration of their sexuality.

Coming out is a deeply individual decision. Some people do it at fifteen. Some at fifty. Some never do.

All of those experiences deserve respect.

But I've also started understanding something I didn't fully appreciate when I was younger.

Visibility matters.

Not because everyone needs to wave a flag or march in a parade.

But because there are still people who genuinely believe they're alone.

There are teenagers sitting in religious education classes being told the questions they're asking are dangerous.

There are adults who've spent decades convincing themselves that being honest would cost them everything.

There are people who don't fit comfortably into the labels we've created.

And there are people who, like me, have been openly queer for years without ever feeling particularly connected to the broader community.

Sometimes, simply seeing someone live openly and unapologetically can make an enormous difference.

That's become increasingly important to me as a writer.

I've spent years telling stories about identity, love, loss, sexuality, relationships, and the wonderfully dysfunctional business of being human.

Some are fictional.

Some are deeply personal.

All are grounded in one belief:

Nobody should have to apologize for being who they are.

That's not a marketing slogan.

It's a lesson that took me decades to fully understand.

I Haven't Changed My Identity. I've Changed My Relationship With It.

I want to be very clear about something.

I haven't suddenly become more queer.

There's no advanced membership level.

No rewards program.

No complimentary toaster after 25 years.

I was just as queer at 26 as I am at 51.

The difference is that I've stopped viewing my identity exclusively through the lens of my own life.

At 26, being out meant having the freedom to love who I wanted.

At 35, it meant refusing to allow other people's assumptions to define my relationships.

At 45, it meant navigating grief, rebuilding my life, and remembering that my identity didn't disappear simply because the person I loved had died.

At 51, it's starting to mean something else.

Connection.

History.

Responsibility.

Belonging.

I understand now that the freedoms I've enjoyed weren't created in a vacuum.

They exist because people before me fought battles I never had to fight.

Some marched.

Some protested.

Some challenged laws.

Some lost their jobs, their families, their churches, and even their lives.

Some simply refused to be invisible.

And while I've spent most of my adult life insisting that I didn't need a community to tell me who I was, I can recognize that the community helped make it possible for me to live as I have.

That's not a small thing.

That's a debt of gratitude.

Maybe Belonging Was Never About Fitting In

The older I get, the more I realize that fitting in and belonging are not the same thing.

Fitting in suggests changing yourself to match the room.

Belonging means finding a room where you don't have to.

I've spent 25 years being out.

I've spent most of those years comfortable in my own skin.

But only recently have I begun feeling truly at home in a community that has been there all along.

I don't expect to agree with everyone in it.

I don't expect everyone to understand my particular experience.

I don't expect to become the guy who attends every Pride event, memorizes every acronym, and owns an entire wardrobe organized by the colors of the rainbow.

Although, knowing me, I could probably turn that last one into a tax-deductible business expense.

What I do expect is to show up more.

To listen more.

To lend my voice where it matters.

To remember the people who made my freedom possible.

And to make sure the next generation doesn't have to spend 25 years wondering whether there's a place for them.

Because there is.

Even for the sarcastic ones.

Especially for the sarcastic ones.

Twenty-Five Years Out. And Still Coming Home.

October is LGBTQ+ History Month, and this year I've been thinking about history in a way I never really did before.

Not just the history of a movement.

My own history.

The young man who came out during one of the darkest weeks in modern American history.

The Marine I loved when his career required silence.

The woman I married and lost.

The religious institutions that made me feel unwelcome.

The church that welcomed me back without asking me to pretend.

The relationships that shaped me, including the ones that ended.

The writer who discovered that telling stories could be another form of advocacy.

And the 51-year-old man who has finally started to understand that independence and belonging don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I can be fiercely independent and still value community.

I can reject labels and still embrace a shared identity.

I can be unapologetically myself and still find strength in standing beside other people.

And perhaps that's the lesson I was supposed to learn all along.

For 25 years, I thought coming out was something I'd already finished.

A chapter written, a door opened, a decision made.

But I'm beginning to realize that coming out isn't always one moment.

Sometimes it's a lifetime of discovering new ways to be honest about who you are.

And sometimes, after decades of insisting you don't need to belong anywhere, you look around and realize you've found a place that feels like home.

I didn't spend my life trying to fit into the LGBTQ+ community.

I never thought I needed to.

But this October, for the first time, I'm beginning to feel like I belong to it.

Not because I've changed who I am.

But because I've finally understood that being myself was always enough.

And after 25 years?

That's a pretty damn good feeling.

Happy LGBTQ+ History Month.

Stay visible. Stay curious. Stay unapologetic.

And for the love of everything holy, stop trying to fit into places that require you to shrink.

There's a whole world out there with room for you exactly as you are.

— August Quinn

Unapologetically human. Unapologetically queer. Still allergic to being told what to do.