David Mundell comes out as the first openly gay Tory cabinet minister. So what?

David Mundell, the Secretary of State for Scotland, is gay. And you know what, so what? Of course Mundell is not the first gay Tory cabinet minister, merely, it’s believed, the first to “openly” acknowledge the fact. He did so in typically low-key fashion, writing on his website:

Having taken one of the most important decisions of my life and resolved to come out publically as gay in 2016, I just want to get on with it, and now, just like that, I have said it. How can it be both so easy and so hard to say a few short words?

Good for him and good luck to him. Mundell would not, I think, like to consider himself a pioneer and yet while it has, generally speaking, never been easier to come out in this fashion it remains the case that the general is not the same as the personal. It makes a difference that others have trod this path before you but that does not necessarily make it significantly easier for you to do so.