Big Gay Closet

The past week was almost all about the Cinco de Gayo announcement which turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax (“Who?”  echoed the world over, from gay blog to gay blog) but still interesting and important as one of America’s country music’s stars came crooning out of the closet with a new album and a new book.

Of course, we’d known last week since TMZ published her identity well ahead of the official announcement.

Feel like reliving it?

In chronological order, the Cinco de Gayo posts from the past week:

Newly Out Chely Wright:  ”I had a gun in my mouth” (This was the interview that The Advocate published too early and had to take back down. They published it again on the 5th)

Queerty asks: Did Chely Wright & Howard Bragman have a responsibility to closeted celebs?

Newsy.com: Will Chely Wright’s fans listen to a lesbian?

On the 5th, which was meant to be the official Chely Wright outing, New Zealand Olympian Blake Skjellerup came out in the Australian gay magazine DNA’s special sports issue. He also tweeted a very cute tweet.

We had a new contributor share a story of her very first girl-crush. When’s the first time you fell in love with someone of the same sex as you? Tell us!

Another new contributor told us the story of going to pride with her three gay aunts, and how she caught the attention of every woman in the room.

Oh and the incredible Jane Lynch — of The L Word and, more recently, Glee fame — spoke about her early affair with a teacher and about coming out.

Finally we (along with the rest of the queer blogosphere) gave a virtual standing ovation to Rachel Maddow who made it clear on her show why it is newsworthy when the vehemently anti-gays turn out to be gay, as she addressed the George Rekers/rentboy scandal.

More to come this week. I have a fantastic kinda-coming-out-story ready for tomorrow and hoping a few more will land in my inbox soon!

Have a Happy Mothers’ Day, regardless of how happy your mother is. Sometimes for us gay folks, family isn’t all that.

Jacq

I can’t say I know a lot of country music fans, but some of you will. I can’t help but remember how things went for Ellen when she came out. She’d been such a huge star and in the fourth season of her own television show, and a couple years later was unemployable.

How big a risk did Chely take in coming out? Could she end up like Ellen did?

And did she only come out now to promote her book and her CD both which were released today — the day before her intended coming out? Cynical publicity stunt, or pre-empting the CD and book launch questions?

Openly gay PR man Howard Bragman is the mastermind orchestrating the buzz around May 5′s short-lived mystery celeb coming out. We know now that the gay celeb is country singer Chely Wright — and all the build-up made her more famous than a new album and book could. But the guessing game had America speculating about other gay-ish celebrities like Queen Latifah, Shelby Lynne, Ryan Seacrest, and Anderson Cooper, none of whom were ready to come out themselves, nor answer questions about when they might. So while Bragman’s ultimate goal was to ease one client out of the closet, did he actually hurt the larger group of still-closeted gay celebs?

Bragman has helped other gay public figures come out. There’s WNBA player Cheryl Swoopes, Cher’s daughter-cum-son Chaz Bono, and Family Ties’ Meredith Baxter. Thanks to Bragman, Chely Wright this week becomes free to embrace lesbianism in her life. Her new memoir Like Me and album Lifted Off The Ground will undoubtedly sell bigger because of the buzz. That’s great for both of them, but what about the other closeted celebs who have had to fend off their own outings in the wake of Wright’s media storm? Is it OK that Wright and Bragman’s press ploy may have placed unnecessary pressure on closeted celebs? Do they have no obligation to these other gay celebrities whatsoever?

read the rest: Did Howard Bragman Do More Damage To Gay Celebrities Than Good? / Queerty.

I’d wondered about this myself. The key here was obviously to build as much hype as possible because with someone of Chely Wright’s low profile, the announcement wouldn’t have made much of a stir on its own. However, the manufactured hype created a situation that must have been incredibly stressful for celebrities who are still keeping their sexuality  a secret — and for those who are keeping no secrets but are accused of it anyway.

So. Should Howard Bragman have considered this effect before he created all this hype? Or should celebrities simply expect pressure like this as part of being closeted?

People magazine has confirmed that TMZ is correct and the much anticipated May 5th coming out “Cinco de Gayo” celebrity is Chely Wright, a country music singer.

She did an interview with The Advocate:

For Wright, eventually the strain from years of practiced hiding—along with failed attempts at dating men and romantic relationships with women that were ultimately crushed under the weight of secrecy—left her feeling isolated and abjectly suicidal.

The turning point came in 2006, when the devastation of a bad breakup caused Wright to consider ending her own life. “I had a gun in my mouth,“ recalls Wright. “That’s a hard thing to come back from. It was really songs that saved my life. The process of writing songs—and the experience of writing down my story—that really carried me through it. When I finally knew that I could no longer go on living a lie anymore, it was over. Everything had to change. The experience of writing a book…this record, coming out I doubt I’ll ever have another experience in my life that is so dramatic and intense. It’s just been this incredible, dynamic journey for me. I’m thankful for it, but I’d never want to go through it again.”
from The Advocate

Her story will ring true for many other LGBTQ people who’ve been to the place where suicide seemed the only way out. I also love how she celebrates her journey and, at the same time, admits it’s not something she’d ever want to go through again.

Well, I guess we’ve ended the week on the right note with TMZ reporting that the mystery gay is country western singer, Chely Wright.

Autostraddle had speculated that the woman in question was another person I’ve never heard of — “SHELBY FUCKING LYNNE” is the direct quote from their source. But enough about my ignorance of country music.

Back to our Sunday round up of the week just past.

The big news is that we’ve moved the site onto a server. It’s like graduating to big-boy pants from diapers, and just as prone to disaster. It went better than I expected it would, and thank you all for your patience as the site went a bit nuts for a day.

We started the week with some coming out stories. Jbskhfx wrote about slipping his announcement into Christmas Dinner.

Keeire wrote that after a while, coming out isn’t always necessary.

Lavenderprecipitation reflected on the passing of her childhood friend.

And, as usual, we did a lot of talking about celebrities:

Crystal Chappell came out as bisexual

We featured the newly single Tammy Lynn Michaels talking about wishing she could be out when she was starting out as an actress.

I came out from under my rock and discovered the interview where Mika called himself bisexual.

Our “Great Moments in Coming Out” featured singer, Adam Lambert and Rugby player, Gareth Thomas.

Peter Thatchell caused an uproar by suggesting the Pope was splitting up two lovers in death in order to make one of them more acceptable to beatification.

We discussed whether or not coming out is a responsibility, and speculated a lot on who was coming out on May 5th.

And there was this adorable story from the Give a Damn campaign, which was just too cute to not share.

And that was it! Big Gay Closet is now almost 2 months old. Thank you guys so much for hanging around and reading

Jacqui

PS: We have a new contact form on the “Contact Us” page. It works too!

TMZ has learned the big “coming out” announcement planned for this week will be … country star Chely Wright.

There’s been a big buzz over the last week as to which celeb was announcing he/she was gay … we knew it was going to be unveiled in PEOPLE mag next week.  But now TMZ knows for sure.

Wright has a book coming out this week as well — it’s called, “Like Me.”  And she has a CD coming out too — called “Lifted Off the Ground.”

The 39-year-old singer scored a #1 country song back in 1999 with “Single White Female,” when she was named Academy of Country Music new artist of the year.

Wright is the first major country artist ever to come out.  She has been romantically linked to a number of celebs, including Brad Paisley.

This is a big deal in the country world.  Chely is rolling the dice on her career … it’s unclear how traditionally-conservative country fans will react.

Interesting … she lists Howard Bragman as her publicist, who was the mastermind behind the Chaz Bono story.

via Chely Wright — She’s Coming Out | TMZ.com.

TMZ has a pretty good track record, so it’s pretty likely this is true.

Not being a country music fan, I’ve never heard of her. It’ll be interesting to see what she has to say on Wednesday.