Finally. A gay power ranger!
In an interview with The Advocate running online next week, David Yost, who from 1993 to 1996 starred as the blue Power Ranger in more than 200 episodes of the children’s television phenomenon, talks about the taunting and teasing he endured on the set of the show, and the years of ups and downs that have finally made him able to say the words, “I’m gay.”
“A week before I left the TV show I made a commitment to myself saying, “If I get called faggot one more time, I’m walking because I can’t handle it any more,” Yost says. Within a week it happened, and it happened from a higher-level person on the show.”
Yost says he spent the next few years doing everything he could to “pray the gay away.”
via Power Ranger David Yost: I’m Gay | News | Advocate.com.
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Wanda Sykes came out over the phone
Lesbian comedian WANDA SYKES was so scared about revealing her sexuality to her parents, she broke the news to them in a “long distance phone call”.
The funnywoman ‘came out’ publicly in 2008 after attending a gay rights rally in Las Vegas, and the 46 year old admits she spent years worrying about how to tell her mother and father the truth.
Sykes reveals she conquered her fear by making sure her parents were a “six-hour plane ride” away when she confessed her secret.
She tells newsman Larry King, “I have parents who are still alive. So yeah… that’s why you suppress all that, you bury it, and to try to fit in. I’m 46… My father’s in the service. Right, retired colonel. So (I told them in) a long distance phone call. We’re talking, like, coast to coast. You always want to give your family like a six-hour plane ride before they can get to you.”
And Sykes admits her relatives are still coming to terms with the revelation.
She adds, “We’re working on it… They love me… I know without a doubt, my family, they love me. And you know, we’re working on it. Keep praying for us.”
from ContactMusic.com via Diva
Bush Campaign Chief Ken Mehlman is Gay
Ken Mehlman, President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, has told family and associates that he is gay.
Mehlman arrived at this conclusion about his identity fairly recently, he said in an interview. He agreed to answer a reporter’s questions, he said, because, now in private life, he wants to become an advocate for gay marriage and anticipated that questions would arise about his participation in a late-September fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights AFER, the group that supported the legal challenge to Californias ballot initiative against gay marriage, Proposition 8.
“It’s taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life,” said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. “Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I’ve told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they’ve been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something thats made me a happier and better person. Its something I wish I had done years ago.”
via Bush Campaign Chief and Former RNC Chair Ken Mehlman: Im Gay – Politics – The Atlantic.
Read the rest, and good for him. I’m still puzzled, though.
Why couldn’t he have supported gay rights publicly when he was closeted? I mean, there are a couple straight people who support equality. One or two, like.
And Ken, we wish you’d done it years ago too.
Check out Michael Rogers’ post on the matter, and what forced the outing interview to go to press early.
Study: Soccer fans would back gay players
Nearly a quarter of all people playing, coaching or refereeing professional football personally know a gay player, according to new research into attitudes towards homosexuality in the game.
It also finds that almost eight out of 10 fans thought openly gay players would have the same positive effect on football as black players did in the 1980s and 90s when racism in the sport was tackled.
The findings are likely to raise expectations that football will soon follow other professional sports and see a top player come out. In recent years, rugby union, hurling and tennis have seen star players reveal that they are gay while at the height of their careers. But the survey, conducted by the University of Staffordshire, suggested such a move for a professional footballer would not be without risks.
Of the professional players, coaches, managers and referees who know gay footballers currently playing the game, a third believe they would face abuse from other players if they came out. Almost four out of five think they would face hostility from fans.
via Fans say they would back gay footballers who come out | World news | The Observer.
Things are moving on a bit! I mean, soccer really couldn’t be much gayer, but the only reason that’s ok is because the fans think they know the players are very very straight. Of course, not all of them are. They couldn’t be.
We’ve read the Gay Footballer Blog
I love playing football and I don’t mind being gay but sadly those two things don’t mix very well. It’s ridiculous that people form an opinion about you based on your sexuality but in the world of football and sports in general that is still the case especially at the lower levels. If I ever make it to the premier league I promise I will be openly gay…
via One In Eleven
(By the way, you have to read his “Coming Out Letter to My Religious Parents“… it’s perfect and hilarious.)
We’ve also read the story of John Fashanu — the footballer who came out publicly only to be disowned by his brother and then kill himself after being accused of sexual assault in America.
Still, I don’t think it’ll be long before someone with something to lose decides to come out. While there is likely to be some abuse from the stands — and I don’t want to belittle the effects of that (just ask Gareth Thomas) — I think society in general is very ready to be supportive and even to celebrate the footballer who decides to test the waters for everyone else.
Twitter told Joe McElderry he’s gay
You know how when you came out, a few of your friends said, “Yeah, I always suspected.” or, “I totally knew”?
Joe McElderry’s story beats that. Someone hacked his Twitter account and posted messages indicating he was gay and had been “living a lie.” The 19 year-old was stunned, but then found himself thinking that it might just be true. A couple weeks later, and he’s come out.
“It was always the case at school, really. I’d had girlfriends. I kissed loads of girls and I kissed one boy last year. I just thought, ‘Is this just not what everybody does – experimenting, at this age’? I never thought anything of it.
“It’s not fair on the boy I kissed last year if I talk about him. It was just before X Factor and it was nothing serious. It was a peck of a kiss while I was at college. I just thought, ‘What happened there? That was pretty nice’.
“It didn’t trigger anything in me at all. I didn’t feel anything. I just thought, ‘That was strange’.
“When I was doing X Factor I genuinely thought I wasn’t gay, and then I kind of just got to the point where, actually, maybe I am.
“Now I can get on with the rest of my life and move on and be comfortable.
“There’s always been speculation about me so I’m kind of used to it.
“I thought I wasn’t gay, so I thought it was just part of the job with all the speculation.
“So I just let it go over my head and got on with it.
“It eventually sunk into my mind. Genuinely, I just assumed I wasn’t gay. I was so young I never thought any more about it.”
from The Sun
Sara Gilbert comes out. REALLY?
At the Television Critics Assn. summer press tour in Beverly Hills, Gilbert spoke openly about raising a boy and a girl with her partner, TV producer Allison Adler. The kids were born in 2004 and 2007. She’ll be discussing motherhood, parenting and more soon on “The Talk” with co-hosts Julie Chen, Sharon Osbourne, Holly Robinson Peete, Leah Remini and Marissa Jaret Winokur. Press materials for the show hadn’t mentioned Adler in Gilbert’s bio — a decision the actress said was hers, not the networks, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“Ive been acting my whole life, and Ive never really discussed my personal life. This is a talk show,” Gilbert said. “So obviously, I’m going to be discussing my life more, and I felt that the first place I wanted to do it wasn’t in a CBS press release.”
“It just seemed impersonal, and I felt like I’d rather come in person and talk to you about all that stuff here.”
via Sara Gilbert puts it out there: Shes a lesbian | Ministry of Gossip | Los Angeles Times.
Ok this one I need to file under “WTF?”. I didn’t realise she hadn’t come out officially. Last week, even, the headlines were talking about her as a lesbian mother on television.
Congrats, Sara Gilbert. It’s awesome to be out. It’s more awesome that you were never really very in.
Older LGBTs in care often have to return to the closet
The last 50 years has seen huge advances in gay rights within the United Kingdom, something that no doubt deserves to be should celebrate, however Jane Hill’s exploration of the LGBT community and their experiences in old age residential care in BBC Radio 4′s “It’s My Story, Glad To Be Gay” shows all too sadly how many older LGBT people are finding themselves facing that same solid wall of institutionalised homophobia that they were forced to face in their youth.
via Aging UK LGBT Population Facing Having To Go Back Into An Isolating Closet To Survive.
How hard is it for an athlete to come out?
So let’s get this right. First, an athlete coming out would have trouble playing well because of all the attention (presumably negative) he would get. Funny though, many gay athletes say they feel staying closeted hindered their performance because hiding is a huge distraction. Second, Taylor seems to assume that things would go badly for the whole team after an athlete came out on the squad. How about the possibility that the team will do well? Will the gay player get the credit because he came out? Taylor doesn’t seem to consider that.
It’s disappointing to see a columnist for the daily student paper at a top-notch university paint coming out so negatively, not even considering the overwhelming evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, that says to the contrary.
Even with the media, we still have a lot of work to do.
Via Outsports
OutSports blogger Cyd Zeigler Jr takes issue with a piece written in the Stanford Daily about why it’s so tough for athletes to come out. It appears the Stanford writer wasn’t thinking his statements through and manages to inadvertently blame players who come out for causing distractions and undermining team morale. Sound familiar? Think “unit cohesion”. This isn’t a new argument. The biggest objection I’d have (along with Cyd) to the piece is that it fails to show the positive statements that have been made by sports figures who have come out, and also fails to show the negative impacts being closeted can have.
I’ve read the Stanford Daily piece (by Tom Taylor) and it’s certainly not ill-intentioned. And he’s right when he says this:
Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be an easy solution. Some players are probably going to have to take it upon their shoulders to endure all this and lead the way–to inspire others that they are free to be honest and to overcome prejudices so that this career path is open to absolutely anyone with the right skills and athletic ability.
Cute soapy coming out scenes
I hate soaps, but I thought this storyline was cute. The mother’s acting is horrific.
It’s never too late to be a lesbian
“While some people find change threatening,” Diamond says, “others find it exciting and liberating, and I definitely think that for women in middle adulthood and late life, they might be the most likely to find sexual shifts empowering. We’re an anti-ageing society. We like people to be young, nubile and attractive. And I think the notion that your sexuality can undergo these really exciting, expansive possibilities at a stage when most people assume that women are no longer sexually interesting and are just shutting down, is potentially a really liberating notion for women. Your sexual future might actually be pretty dynamic and exciting – and whatever went on in your past might not be the best predictor at all of what your future has in store.”
