My focus here is only on coming out as an atheist since that’s what I have experience with. However, pieces of this may be helpful for those who need to come out as Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, gay, polyamorous, communist, etc.

Step 1 – Come out to yourself. First you need to admit to yourself that which you are denying. As long as you lie to yourself you will be miserable, self loathing, and suffer from cognitive dissonance.

Step 2 – Visit http://outcampaign.org and read the letter from Richard Dawkins. He is a much more eloquent than I am and will give you a lot of encouragement.

Step 3 – Come out to a few confidants. Consider this to be practice for the harder people to talk to. In some cases this can be people you know that are a few steps ahead of you, but if you think you are alone, then somebody you trust and who either presents a low risk of rejecting you or who by rejecting you presents low personal risk. If you have nobody that meets these criteria, then feel free to give me a call and I’ll give you my phone number to have a chat.

Step 4 – Come out to more friends. This eases your comfort in who you are. This is also likely a good time to start finding a sense of atheist community either by joining an organization, joining Atheist Nexus, reading atheist blogs, or listening to Chariots of Iron (great show).

Step 5 – Come out to your parents. IF YOU ARE FINANCIALLY DEPENDANT ON THEM AND YOU SUSPECT THEY WILL CUT YOU OFF THEN WAIT UNTIL YOU ARE INDEPENDENT. If they are Christians and they love you then this conversation will not go well, at all. It may start with them trying to understand you, but in the end hurtful things will be said on both sides. When emotion takes over, end the conversation. Just leave the conversation knowing that the reason it went so bad was because they love you and care about what they consider to be your eternal well being and they have the wrong idea of the life of an atheist. If your parents want you in their lives then they will accept you. In the off chance they don’t accept you, then good riddance, move on with life and find a new family.

Step 6 – Update your Facebook and MySpace religion to atheist. Don’t hide behind other, humanist, skeptic, or anything else that isn’t clear. Let people know who and what you are.

Step 7 – Be the best goddamn atheist you can be. Show the people who think that you must be a sociopath under the Devil’s control that they are wrong. By doing this, you may change their minds about atheists.

Step 8 – Get involved. Find a way to contribute to the atheist movement.

I should note that I didn’t do all of this in order, in part due to the fact that I did a lot of my coming out simply as a non-Christian while I identified as a deist. If I were to do it again, this is how I would.

Check out the Out Campaign website at http://outcampaign.org