His parents tried to expedite the process by introducing him to a woman when he was in his early 20s. But even as the couple dated, then lived together and eventually married, Howe was suppressing his true feelings. He was a gay man trying to live a heterosexual existence.

Two years into the marriage, "I couldn't live that lie anymore," he says.

For Steve Howe, it was time to come out.

Coming out - disclosing one's sexual orientation to others - is one of the most difficult and important issues that gay people face. For many, it's an intensely personal, anxiety-filled process that revolves around family, friends, work and one's inner sense of well being.

The situation is often awkward, too, for the heterosexuals in whom gays confide. Suddenly, everyday relationships become more complex.

And the process is never as simple as making a single announcement.

"When you're not out, you've got to cover your tracks, cover up what your life really is, and what you stand for," says Howe, 39, the manager of printing services, mail operations and stores for the city of Cincinnati. He lives in Delhi Township with his gay partner of 12 years.

"Being gay is who I am. It's a part of me."

As America comes to grips with myriad gay issues - gay marriage, gay clergy ordinations, gay-rights laws - more people are engaging in difficult talk.

For many gays, reaching the point where they can acknowledge their sexual orientation - to themselves and to others - is an agonizingly slow process.

In some cases, "They have kept this inside themselves for many years, because they thought it was necessary in order to get ahead, to be acceptable," says Ritch C. Savin-Williams, a clinical psychologist and Cornell University professor of human development. He has written several books on gay issues and coming out.

Some people admit to themselves that they are gay, but never make a public disclosure, Savin-Williams says. Sometimes many years separate the self-disclosure and the public one.

"Not to come out is to deny yourself," says Kathleen Mack, a clinical psychologist who devotes a significant portion of her Sharonville practice to gay and lesbian issues. Staying closeted erodes self-esteem and stifles interactions with others, she says.

'I really struggled with it'

Therapists use a phrase - internalized homophobia - to describe the inner conflict that many gays face when they realize they are different from what society, friends and family expect them to be.

"You hate yourself for a period of time," says Tammy Miller-Powell, 40, of Monfort Heights, who came out in the mid-1990s. "Some people do for maybe a minute. Others do for years.

"I really struggled with it. I prayed, please, this can't be happening. I can't be this."

Joe Smitherman, 39, began the hard process at age 18.

"It took about two years of hard living to come to a point where I had to make a decision (about coming out). I drank a lot those two years," the West End resident says.

"The decision was: Do I live or do I die?" he says. "I'm not saying I was on a suicide watch, but it was a constant question: Do I want to live as Joe? I'd tried to live as somebody else, and it wasn't going to work.

"What I did is try to be true to myself and live my life."

Mack says coming out can be much more difficult for people who come from families with conservative religious backgrounds, who grow up believing homosexuality is a sin.

Lori M. Lonergan, 53, attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through college. She was a high school religious education instructor, a Eucharistic minister, a member of her parish council.

She began to think she was gay in college, "but there was no way on earth I could affirm it, because it went against everything my life had stood for," she says. "Everything in society says that who (gays) are, what they are and how they live is damnable."

She met her partner 19 years ago. For about a dozen years, they hid their sexuality from the outside world. They had no gay friends. They didn't frequent gay establishments.

Lonergan believes the stress of keeping her sexuality under wraps contributed to her suffering several heart attacks in 1997. She vowed to her partner in the hospital that she would no longer live a closeted life.

For her and others, coming out involved not only coming to terms with the internal struggle, but also judging the extent of external repercussions.

Mack, who counsels clients about coming out, says: "What I recommend is to size up the person in your life who is most likely to give you a positive response. And so you work your way up from the easiest to most difficult."

Steve Howe says disclosing his sexuality to his wife was "very, very tough." She responded by saying she already suspected it. The couple, who had no children together, divorced. But before the split, Howe's wife told his parents he was gay.

Howe's mother, Connie, says the news shocked her, but she was not angry. (Howe's father died five years ago.)

"I always thought he would have a child," the 61-year-old East Price Hill resident says. "I waited for that day."

But the changed reality "didn't change my love for Steve. He's my son. I love Steve for what he is. His friends have been good to me."

Initially, at least, many gays don't get such a positive reaction, Mack says. In working with clients, "We always prepare for the worst."

Miller-Powell's husband found letters she'd written to a woman and disclosed the news to her grandmother. At the time, the couple and their young daughter were living with the grandmother, who had raised Miller-Powell.

The grandmother said, " 'You will make this marriage work, or you will be on the street,' " says Miller-Powell, who took her daughter and left. In 1995 she met a woman and they have been a couple ever since.

After recovering from her heart attacks, Lonergan chose to come out first at her workplace, Procter & Gamble. She chose a day when she and co-workers were in diversity training.

The moment of truth was both terrifying and empowering, she says.

"Once you do it, it's whew, done. Until next time."

An obligation to be yourself

Indeed, coming out isn't a one-time thing.

"Every time a gay person turns around, they're coming out again," Mack says. "You move into a new apartment, you come out again because those people don't know."

Warren Liang, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati, comes out every year to a new group of medical students. Because he lectures on male homosexuality, he believes it's important that students know he is gay.

One negative reaction has resulted. Someone wrote "fag" on his classroom door.

In social situations, too, he sometimes finds himself weighing the costs versus benefits of disclosure, wondering whether to introduce his partner of 23 years as simply a friend, or as his companion. Innocuous moments can become excruciating exercises.

Smitherman designs and builds kitchens and bathrooms. A few months ago, he was talking with a product vendor, within earshot of several trades people. Casual talk turned to dating. Smitherman mentioned that he had recently married - a man named Jason.

"All of a sudden I was not necessarily in a really friendly place," he says.

But there's no place he's not out.

"I don't have a lot of tolerance for people who are in the closet," he says. "We have a moral obligation to be ourselves and be out."

Staying closeted hinders gays' acceptance in the community at large, says Dean Forster, a 36-year-old architect from Covington. "The most wealthy and influential gay people in Cincinnati still struggle with that issue," he says. "We should strive to be out, letting our co-workers and straight friends know who we are."

But the fear of coming out is real.

Says Liang: "I've always felt this about coming out: Do it if you feel you have more to gain than you stand to lose."

Miller-Powell lost her relationship with the grandmother who raised her. Lonergan left her church because she no longer felt welcome. Smitherman says he has friends who have been disowned by their parents.

But the gains are powerful, too. Coming out and serving as role models, Howe and Lonergan say, helps lessen the internalized homophobia that drives up the suicide rate among young gays.

So Howe displays a flag on his Delhi Township home.

"It's a gay pride flag. It means we're proud of who we are."

E-mail jjohnston@enquirer.com