By Jim Russell, Crisis Magazine - In upper-set society of bygone years, there is no doubt at all what “coming out” was, and long before the universe of homosexuality co-opted the phrase. A coming-out party was, for the adolescent socialite girl, a way to celebrate—and advertise—the new, nubile, and freshly “marriageable” status she achieved as a “debutante” as early as age fifteen.