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

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.

Tracie over at Jezebel does an odds-on roundup of the possible outees for the May 5th Hollywood Coming Out Spectacular that is driving everybody nuts.

The Celebs?

Johnny Weir 1/4

Kelly Clarkson 1/1

Venus Williams 9/1

Zachary Quinto 2/3

Oprah 49/1

Queen Latifah 1/10

Well, there's that.

Bragman has been talking a lot about how it’s time a gay man be cast as a superhero. But one of our sources slipped and may have given us an additional clue about the celebrity’s identity. They used the pronoun “she” when talking to us about the mysterious upcoming guest. They quickly tried to correct themselves by going back to using “he”, but it was too late. While there are many women who it could be, we think we’ve got it narrowed it down to three, although we honestly didn’t expect any of these three women to come out this year. Additionally, Michael Musto of The Village Voice seems to think it’s a singer or someone involved in music. So, with all these conflicting clues, dear reader, your guess is as good as ours.via More on the Cinco de Mayo Surprise « BlindGossip.com.

Now this isn’t a gossip blog. And I do believe that we shouldn’t out people… however, looking at search stats, you guys desperately want to figure out who it is. And this person is voluntarily outing themselves, so… let’s speculate, shall we?

Someone tweeted they hoped it’d be Glenn Close. Now, hope is one thing but I don’t think it’s going to be the multiply married Ms Close anytime soon.

Any guesses from you guys?