Oh, for sure! My position from the start was actually a very strong “she doesn’t have to come out at any point for the likely duration of this show!” so that’s what the previous answer was, me lightly backing off of that because it IS so painful and you can see its effects on her. But of course it has to be done with so much care. That’s the thing, this being a TV show, there’s what’s best for the character/rep and what’s most dramatic and often those are not the same thing.
About Sterling, like. I sympathize! She got caught up with it, she’d JUST had a huge fight with her twin where the issue wasn’t the same-sex thing but instead the secrets, that’s the mindset she was carrying with her into the finale. It’s hard to balance, and even if it was a few days, clearly it was this very charged satisfying new dynamic that was making her feel something she seemed to have been chasing since the start of the show and probably before. And on some level she and April have known and been circling each other since at least the 5th grade. I can get that it felt super significant to her, worth the coming out.
Neither side is wrong–this isn’t even a sides thing, this is just…circumstance. They both have done not great things but are both understandable and ultimately sympathetic, they’re just kids making the best of normal kid stuff as well as the larger social injustices of homophobia.