Impeded relationships. Reduced opportunity.
Yet, the emotional harm of lying about who am is significantly greater than what one person can inflict upon another. Because like truth, that harm is permanent.
People inclined to fuck up someone because they are different, don't deserve a free pass. It is their fucking up which is uncivil, not my choice to abstain from praising Jesus before eating chicken fingers at a business lunch.
What about if there's no harm? What if you ENJOY lying about who you are?
Or, in another twist, what if lying about who you are opens a new world to you, and makes you a different person, perhaps even who you lied about being in the first place? (In the sense that you invent a new identity for yourself, like a Nothern Jewish family boy like Robert Zimmerman emerged into scene as the "wretched hobo poet" Bob Dylan).
An actor might be described as "a person who enjoys lying about who they are." The reference to Dylan is indexical.
[Deeper] Who the hell knows who they are in any sense other than who they choose to be? Am I the teenager who didn't understand the harm of casual racist behavior or participation in high school homophobia?
No. I am the adult who regrets those things and has chosen learn from the experience.
But I am also on the slippery slope to lying with the qualifiers "casual" and "high school."
The identity of his situation with that of a person who enjoys lying is premised upon pleasure being nothing more than the absence of suffering.
This reduces the enjoyment of a person who enjoys lying to an absence of suffering. Belief systems which might take this approach to pleasure tend to treat trying to avoid suffering as suffering - i.e. all the way down, turtles suffer.
Why not? Because so many people have come before and been open about it. Being gay might be wrong in some of the locals' minds, but it's already pretty normal. And it does good: that trucker dude you had a lovely discussion with one morning at Waffle House who had never met an (out) gay person in his life? Well, now he knows that gay people actually exist and can be totally fine folk. He's not going to be helping plan any Pride parades soon, but baby steps.
Edited to add: this is with reference to random people you meet in day to day life. Coming out to parents and friends is much riskier, which is usually why it takes much planning and support of other loved ones in your life.
Example? Look at the attitude change regarding gay weddings in the US during the last twenty years.
In ten years married gay couples will be pretty normal and it started with only a small number of "weirdos" some 20 years ago, who where true to themselves.
Fort the record: I'm straight but feel that it's beyond the pale that people should be denied love and happyness, just because we don't share the same sexual orientation.
We live in a world where we are lucky to be able to be mostly open about what we believe in. But there are still situations where being honest about yourself may lose you a job, or a customer, even with something like being gay.
But what if your true belief pushes in a stronger direction against society and/or the government? "I believe in pirating tools that I cannot afford." "I believe that the age of consent should be 13." "I believe that the US should have a nearly nonexistent military." "I believe that all forms of non-consensual advertising (billboards, web ads, tv ads, intentional product placement) should be illegal."
These things may not come up as much as being gay, but when they do I find that speaking too quickly or even going more than a little against the grain can lose you a lot of friends. Most people won't take the time to hear you out. As soon as they know what you believe, you are judged.
Our society places a lot of pressure on others to accept homosexuality. When you explain your orientation to someone who may judge you for it, they must be careful about responding because the rest of society is likely to judge them in return. Such pressures don't exist for many of my core beliefs.
The drive to not be literally exterminated is a powerful one, so you can be damn sure that pressure for tolerance will continue to be applied now that its "officially" acceptable to apply such pressure.
Not what the OP or the GP are talking about. It might be a valid discussion, but it's not this discussion.
^^ This.
I know many people in flyover country who are atheists, but who go to church every Sunday simply to avoid having them and their children not be ostracized from the majority of social activity.
All decisions should, in part, be made in reference to your own happiness. If "coming out" as an atheist (or homosexual, or...) is going to make your life substantially worth with no real upside for you, "lying" about yourself is a reasonable, and possible necessary, alternative.