Big Gay Closet

Daniel Hernandez Jr., the 20-year old student intern credited with saving the life of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, confirmed to the Dallas Voice this morning that he is openly gay.

via Joe. My. God.: Openly Gay Intern Daniel Hernandez Jr. Credited With Saving Life Of Rep. Giffords.

Obviously, Mr. Hernandez’ sexual orientation isn’t terribly relevant to the fact that he was cool-headed, quick thinking and could very well have saved Rep Giffords’ life. But what is important is that because he’s out, we have one more image in our collective memories of a gay person who made a positive contribution.

More of this, please. Less of the other stuff.

“There are two things in my life that are an absolute. I did not ask for either one of them. Both of them were imposed on me. I had no control over them,” Swilley said. “One was the call of God on my life … the other thing was my sexual orientation.”
source

Jim Swilley, 52 year-old bishop of Conyer’s Church in the Now, has officially announced to his mega church congregation, in Rockdale County, Georgia. that he is gay.

Swilley, now divorced, was married to Debye, who became his associate pastor after founding the church 25 years ago, they had four children. His ex-wife supposedly knew his secret of being gay from the very beginning and kept it a secret for 21 years.

“I think some women marry gay men because they really think they can change them,” Swilley said.

He has told his whole congregation and most of them are being very supportive. There are, however, some conservative Christians that are bad mouthing this man’s moment of truth. He has been called an “instrument of the devil” by one conservative blogger.

He says that the reason for his sudden outburst of the truth was the rash of gay teen suicides. “To think about saving a teenager yeah, I’ll risk my reputation for that.”

via The New Civil Rights Movement

He won’t be the last either.

You can view a news report (and interview with the pastor) here.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

“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.”

via Why it’s never too late to be a lesbian | WorldbbNews.

My sense is that the business world remains more intolerant of open homosexuality than other walks of life such as the professions, the media and the arts. And it’s extraordinary how few openly gay sports stars there are. Even in today’s more tolerant age, there are many lonely people out there still afraid to reveal who they really are for fear of marginalisation and abuse. It can only be a matter of time before someone else finds themselves ‘outed’ on the front page of a national newspaper.

via The Guardian.

When a UK tabloid published allegations that Lord Browne had used company funds to support his male partner, he was outed against his will. While the allegations were proved false, the damage was done.

Michael Musto disagrees with Joan Rivers. He says that the “better plan” was to come out quickly and build your fanbase around your reality, instead of waiting until you need the publicity, like Clay Aiken did.

Adam Lambert is all over the place with his hit record, so I honestly don’t think coming out got in the way of his making a huge splash at all.

If anything, it added to it, and there are plenty of girls who can still fetishize about him and crush on him even though they know he’s hugely “that way.”

Furthermore, young boys can do so, too!

via La Daily Musto.