Recent outings...
These are
just a few, selected stories, for more: "I'm
Gay, LGBT, 'Whatever': The 53 Most Powerful Coming Outs of 2013" -
http://www.towleroad.com/2013/12/50.html
January 2013
There was
some excitement when Jodie Foster accepted her Golden Globe Award (1). In her
acceptance speech, she said (among other things), "I already did my coming
out about a thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age. In those very quaint
days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends, and family, co-workers
and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her." (2)
It is clear
she was out in her private life, but she also at least ‘opened the closet door’
in 2007 when she thanked “my beautiful Cydney, who sticks with me through all
the rotten and the bliss” during her acceptance speech for the Sherry Lansing
Leadership Award at the 16th annual Women in Entertainment Breakfast on 4th
December 2007. (3)
February
2013
One of the
first ‘celebrities’ who definitely did come out publicly in 2013 was Robbie
Rogers, an American professional soccer player, in a brief announcement on his
blog (4). He has played for Columbus Crew (Ohio), Leeds United and Stevenage,
as well as making 18 appearances on the US national team (and scoring 2 goals
for them). He retired before coming out - the only male footballer in Britain to
do so after the late Justin Fashanu (5) came out in 1990. He has since returned
home to the US, where he became the first openly gay man to compete in a top
North American professional sports league when he played his first match for
Los Angeles Galaxy on 26 May 2013. (6)
In December
2013, he revealed that not one gay
professional footballer had contacted him since his coming out. (7)
That same
month Clive Davis, an American record producer and the music industry executive
who founded Arista Records, came out as bisexual in his autobiography, The Soundtrack
of My Life (8).
Since 2004, Davis has been in a relationship with a man, which followed
a previous 14-year relationship with a man. (9)
March 2013
In March,
Richard Wilson, best known for his portrayal of arch-grump Victor Meldrew,
having never spoken about his sexuality, rather casually came out at the age of
76 in an interview with The Daily Mail: “I don’t mind people saying I’m gay,
because I am.” (10)
In the same interview,
he referred to being placed at no. 80 in a recent Time Out list of influential
gay people. It was, he says, ‘the most blatant outing.’ (11)
Nothing much
seemed to happen in April or May, then…
June 2013
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In a House
of Lords debate on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill on 3rd June 2013, Baroness
Liz Barker revealed publicly for the first time that she, herself, is in a
same-sex relationship. The Liberal Democrat peer, who was among the first to
speak, said she had to “declare an interest”. She went on to say, “Many years
ago, I had the great good fortune to meet someone. She and I have loved each
other ever since.” (12)
Ahead of her
coming out in the House of Lords debate, Baroness Barker had about the
challenges the bill faced for PinkNews.co.uk. (13) After her speech, she joined
other proequality campaigners and politicians gathering outside the Houses of
Parliament to hold a vigil in favour of same-sex marriage.
Later that
month, when considering how to vote on marriage equality, Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative
MP for Shrewsbury & Atcham) was “overwhelmed” by local opposition to it. Once
equal marriage was made legal, he returned to his activists with a surprising
message. “I informed my association a few weeks ago that, following my divorce,
I now have a new partner, and it is a guy,” he told Mandrake (aka Tim Walker)
in The Telegraph. (14)
Kawczynski
declined to name his partner, but was delighted by the backing that he received
from many members of his local Conservative association: “They have been very
supportive and kind, which obviously I appreciate greatly. It is very important
to show the youngsters that it is perfectly acceptable and normal to be open
about your sexual preferences. I have always been with women. Now, I have met a
guy.” The announcement makes him the first Tory MP to openly identify as
bisexual.
At 6ft 8½in,
Kawczynski is not only the tallest MP, but is also officially classed as a
giant. In 2006, he campaigned unsuccessfully for new building regulations to
have all doors built 7ft high as standard, because he was so fed up with
banging his head.
July 2013
Michelle
Hardwick joined TV soap Emmerdale early in 2013 to play vet Vanessa Woodfield,
after previously spending nine years playing receptionist Lizzie Hopkirk in
ITV's The Royal.
In an
interview with The Daily Mirror, published online on 6 July (15), she spoke about
her real life partner, Rosie Nicholl. She had never talked about this before because
"it never seemed like the right time." She also felt nervous of
revealing too much when working on The Royal because the majority of that
audience were older.
Since
joining Emmerdale, she is more often asked about her personal life. "I
don’t want to hide anything. I’ve never actually been able to talk about ‘my
girlfriend’ or ‘partner’ - this person that means everything to me, and it
feels good to be able to finally do it."
She also
said: “I do tweet, so people can see me and Rosie on there but they probably
think we’re mates who share a house. People say, ‘I’d never have guessed you
were gay’ because they expect you to look a certain way and I don’t fit their stereotype.”
August 2013
Actor Ben Whishaw
prefers not to discuss his personal life, saying: "For me, it’s important
to keep a level of anonymity. As an actor, your job is to persuade people that
you’re someone else. So if you’re constantly telling people about yourself, I
think you’re shooting yourself in the foot." (16) In 2011 he told Out magazine,
"As an actor you have total rights to privacy and mystery, whatever your
sexuality, whatever you do. I don't see why that has to be something you
discuss openly because you do something in the public eye. I have no
understanding of why we turn actors into celebrities." (17) However, in
August 2013 a representative for Whishaw confirmed that he entered into a civil
partnership with Australian composer Mark Bradshaw in August 2012. (18)
In December
2013, it was confirmed that he will play Freddie Mercury, in an upcoming film about
Freddie and Queen. (19)
After
previously denying that he was gay (20), actor Wentworth Miller, perhaps best
known for his role in the TV series Prison Break, came out in some style.
He had been
invited to appear at the St Petersburg International Film Festival. In a letter
which he posted on the GLAAD (21) website, he replied: "... as a gay man,
I must decline. I am deeply troubled by the current attitude toward and
treatment of gay men and women by the Russian government. The situation is in
no way acceptable, and I cannot in good conscience participate in a celebratory
occasion hosted by a country where people like myself are being systematically
denied their basic right to live and love openly." (22)
Later,
speaking eloquently at a Human Rights Campaign (23) dinner in Seattle on 8 September,
he revealed that he had been so troubled by his sexual orientation that from
the age of 15 he had attempted suicide of a number of occasions. "Growing
up I was a target. ... Every day was a test and there was a thousand ways to fail.
A thousand ways to portray yourself to not live up to someone else’s standards
of what was accepted." He also said, "When someone asked me if that
[suicide] was a cry for help, I said no, because I told no one. You only cry
for help if you believe there's help to cry for." (24)
September
2013
Canadian
speed skater Anastasia Bucsis competed at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver
in the women's 500-metre competition and in the Sochi 2014 Winter
Olympics for women's long track. (25)
She had told
her family and close friends two years before, but decided to come out in a public
statement at Calgary Pride to underscore her opposition to Russia’s gay propaganda
law. She also spoke to The Globe and Mail about “being so proud to be gay”. She
also said, “I could never promote that message of concealing who you are with
all of this going on in Russia. I’m kind of happy that I did it on my own terms.”
(26) In February, she said that she ‘will not use the Winter Olympics as a
platform to protest against Russia's controversial laws.’ (27)
October was a
quiet month.
November
2013
Brenda Urie,
the lead singer of Panic! At the Disco, spoke to http://www.pridesource.com about
their single Girls/Girls/Boys from the current album Too Weird to Live, Too
Rare to Die!.
And never
did I think that I
Would be
caught in the way you got me
But girls
love girls and boys
And love is
not a choice
He described
the song as 'very autobiographical': "I'm proud of who I am and I'm gonna
act accordingly. It's really kind of loosely based on the majority of
relationships I've been in, even now with my wife. Yeah, she's attracted to girls,
and I think some men are extremely attractive and I don't wanna hide it. I have
no shame in it. I like being able to shed some light on that. It's nice to be
able to open up like that."
Asked how he
would label himself sexually, he said: "I guess if I had to classify
myself, I'd say I'm straight. But I have, in the past, experimented in other
realms of homosexuality and bisexuality. Overall I'm more attracted to women.
Like with my wife, I'm just so insanely in love and attracted to my wife that I
go, "Well, OK, my love of musicals can't trump that I love pussy."
(28)
Derek Mackay
MSP is the Minister for Local Government and Planning in the Scottish Government
and since 2011 the Scottish National Party Member of the Scottish Parliament
for Renfrewshire North and West. He has announced that he is living apart from his
wife and is gay. Speaking publicly for the first time about the split, Mr
Mackay - who is also chairman of the SNP - appealed for the family's privacy to
be respected. (29)
He said:
"Having been aware myself for some time and having informed family and friends
it is important for me to be clear publicly that I am gay. ... While I feel it
is important to be open about this change in my personal circumstances I would
ask that our privacy is respected while we support our family through this
period."
The marriage
split is said to have been "amicable". Family members and close personal
and political friends have been "incredibly supportive".
He is one of
a number of gay MSPs, including Joe FitzPatrick, the minister for parliamentary
business; Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives; Patrick
Harvie, the leader of the Scottish Greens; and Jim Eadie, the SNP MSP for
Edinburgh Southern who has campaigned for a change in the law to allow same sex
marriage.
Andrew
Scott, who plays Moriarty in Sherlock, came out in a very low key way in an
interview with The Independent. Discussing his role as Viktor Koslov, a KGB spy
in BBC2 drama Legacy, he was asked how he had managed to use such an authentic
Russian accent. His reply: "There isn't a huge amount of footage of
Russians speaking English as a second language, so I started looking at
Vladimir Putin videos on YouTube. But then Putin introduced anti-gay legislation
this summer – so, being a gay person, I switched to Rudolf Nureyev videos
instead. It was another Nureyev defection of sorts!" (30)
Eminent
psychiatrist, Professor Dinesh Bhugra, is the current President Elect of the World
Psychiatric Association (31) and is Professor of Mental Health & Cultural Diversity
at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. He recently spoke
publicly for the first time of being gay in an interview published in The
Guardian (32): "Being gay is an important part of me, but a private
part." In the interview, he also said that he wants a radical rethink of
mental illness and expressed the hope that his profession would sometime
apologise for the harm it has inflicted on gay people and women.
He has lived
with his partner, Mike, for 30 years.
December
2013
On 2
December, bronze medal winning Olympic diver Tom Daley released a YouTube video
announcing that he has been in a relationship with a man since early that year.
(33) This stopped a lot of speculation about his sexual orientation, but a lot
of people seemed to miss that he also said: "I still fancy girls, but at
the moment I've never been happier." Although he used no specific label,
he would seem to be bisexual rather than gay.
Daley later
said it was a tough decision to speak out about his private life. He said:
"I'd never felt the feeling of love, it happened so quickly, I was
completely overwhelmed by it to the point I can't get him out of my head all
the time."
While other
sports stars, such as Gareth Thomas, Clare Balding, John Amaechi and Steve
Davies (the cricketer) were very supportive (34), his announcement met with some,
sadly predictable abuse on Twitter. (35) Possibly the most bizarre instance was
that of the Westboro Baptist Church (36), who blamed the tragic Glasgow
helicopter crash on Daley’s coming out as a "fag (bi-pervert)". [Ah,
the power of gay!]
At the very
end of 2013, German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks publicly acknowledged
her sexual orientation for the first time, becoming the country’s first openly lesbian
parliamentary minister. (37)
Her
sexuality had been an ‘open secret’, but the 61 year old minister officially
came out in a recent interview with the Rheinische Post. (38) When asked what she
had planned for New Year’s Eve, Hendrick said she would be celebrating with her
partner (39) in Berlin: "We will take a bottle of champagne and a pair of glasses
in the backpack and clink our glasses to welcome in 2014."
While she
has previously kept her personal life private, she has been a vocal supporter
of LGBTI rights in the Bundestag.
Notes:
1. She received
the Cecil B. DeMille Award, an honorary award bestowed by the Hollywood Foreign
Press Association for "outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment".
3.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57U8mcfqsgo; a CNN clip with an interesting
discussion by two reporters following Foster’s speech.
11. Ibid.
12. http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/06/04/lib-dem-peer-baroness-barker-comes-out-during-equal-marriagedebate/;
http://www.lgbthistoryuk.org/wiki/index.php?Title=Baroness_Barker
21. The Gay
& Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLAAD
23. American
LGBT civil rights organisation; http://www.hrc.org/
24. You can
see a recording of his speech here (c. 10 mins): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzURem24MQU
31.
www.wpanet.org/
33.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ojwjnob9ekw - c. 5m 30s;
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/dec/02/tom-daley-in-relationship-with-man
37.
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/german-lesbianminister-comes-out-publicly030114;
http://www.queer.de/detail.php?article_id=20719 - in German
38.
http://www.rp-online.de/nrw/staedte/kleve/kleveministerin-barbara-hendricks-lebt-im-schatten-der-burgaid-1.3915685
- in German
39. The
German word she used (Lebenspartnerin) is clearly a female form of the word.
For support on coming out, you can visit the Lesbian and Gay Foundation's website, www.lgf.org.uk/comingout, where you’ll find lots of practical advice and some tips to remember before coming out.
They've also produced a guide for the families of those who have come out. Our Kids Are Alright! is available to download:
http://www.lgf.org.uk/downloads/212
(you will be prompted to download or save the pdf file).
Collateral Damage
While we celebrate those who were able to come out, we should remember that in some cases there was 'collateral damage'.
For a partner or spouse to discover after years, sometimes decades, that their relationship is not what they thought it was can be devastating and traumatic to say the least. The effect on children of the relationship can be just as troubled.
Feelings may range from betrayal through shame (at having been fooled, for instance) to relief (now it's obvious why things were rocky). Often the partner will have no idea of where to turn for advice or support. Here are some ideas:
Straight Partners Anonymous
http://www.straightpartnersanonymous.co.uk
Contact: teresa.copp@ntlworld.com or spaorganisation@gmail.com
US sites
http://www.straightspouse.org/
http://www.gayhusbands.com/
Channel 4 documentary My Husband’s Gay told 4 different stories:
http://www.caledonia.tv/productions/fullcatalogue/video.aspx?id=1305
(Sadly, I could not find the actual video.)
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