I find the analogy with early Christianity odd, though. The analogy to breast cancer and the like seems more appropriate. Christianity is a religion which is spread from people to people, it doesn't exactly catch you all alone in your house. Early Christians met in secret in catacombs and house Churches, every Christian was converted, baptized, anointed in a grouping of Christians. So I don't know how "coming out" would've said to a Christian "you're not alone". They never thought they were alone, they just knew they were an unwanted group.
Let me explain:
(0) "Coming out" refers to the public announcement. For people at a "certain level", doing that as a gay person has many similarities with "coming out" as a Christian (way back when).
(1) Belonging to a religion and being gay are similar, in that neither is immediately visually apparent. They are also similar in the extreme prejudice that people have been subjected to if they were one or the other.
(2) You say early Christians met in secret and so on. Many gays too do that all over the world, and even in the USA. "Alone" does not necessarily mean literally alone. Think about it. The word can be used with a variety of means: e.g. when your priest tells you that "
you are not alone; God is with you", he doesn't literally mean ...
I'm sure that gays in America know that there are other gays in America; you know that, and I know that. On that basis alone, it should have been immediately clear that my use of "alone" could not have been intended to mean what you have taken it to mean. I also have a fairly good understanding of the early history of Christianity; so ...
I thought I would not have to explain such things, but seeing that I do, here's a different way of putting it, in the context of a guy like Cook: "there are others like you out here, and we can thrive".
(3) Lest you misunderstand the last point too; it too is not intended to be read that literally. Let me point out one aspect of my earlier statement---that it was a big deal if someone "big" came out as a Christian. The larger point was not that nobody else knew they were Christians.
I'm sure that there are people, gay and otherwise, who knew Cook was gay; but I'll bet there is an even larger number who did not. The point is that all those other gays who did not know probably find something in the fact that someone "at that level" came out, just as the early Christians found something---or at least claimed they did---when someone "big" came out as a Christian.
The existence of this thread is precisely because the head of Apple, and not some manamba, has publicly stated that he is gay.
That is the thing to think about.