@Sumitra: Gays and lesbians did get their rights by coming out, I'm totally with you there. My point is that it was courageous people who did that and then the time it took for the asshats of the world to wake up and clue in that it wasn't actually affecting them at all to have a neighbour/co-worker/friend/whatever who was also gay. There were also tons of gays and lesbians who totally legitimately were still in the closet because they'd get fired by their employer or beaten to death by their neighbour. Nothing like the beaten to death thing is going to happen because someone's a gamer. It's not as big a deal or as big a portion of most gamers' lives to be remotely comparable to someone's sexual orientation. But a few people in the comments of the initial announcement that WoW.com did about this new Real ID thing did mention that their boss wouldn't have hired them if they knew that they were into this sort of activity outside of work.

I'd love to tell people that I game and have them not make a big deal about it. But people still do and there are those of us who can't out ourselves easily without taking it on the chin a little.

Again, I hope no one takes my fairly broad comparison between the problems of the GLTB community and gamers as offensive. They're not meant to be and the comparison is only really relevant because being gay and being a gamer are both things that many people are good at hiding. Whether they should or not is debatable in both cases. I can understand why people would hide either.