How Ellen DeGeneres Helped Change The Conversation About Gays

"Ellen DeGeneres is ... almost a litmus test of where we have been as a society," [Dietram Scheufele, a communications professor at the University of Wisconsin] says. "When she first came out and really put the issue of same-sex partnerships on people's agendas, and I mean people who really wouldn't have thought about it, I think the country was still in a very different state."

From her first stand-up performance on national TV in the US in 1986, the same year that the Supreme Court ruled that states have right to enforce code of sexual behavior, to 2008, when Ellen married Portia de Rossi, after California's Supreme Court ruled a previous ban on gay marriage to be unconstitutional, Ellen's public life has mirrored the broader shift towards accepting homosexuality. [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief on Mar 26, 2013 - 109 comments

25 YEAR OLD RECENTLY OUT ARTIST CHRONICLING HIS ADVENTURES INTO THE WORLD OF GAY. Just a regular guy who happens to like other guys. Currently living in NYC. Work in animation, write and draw for a living. Hopeless romantic. Things I like: cartoons, writing, drawing, uke, piano, basketball, pokemon.

He's dorky, awkward, and struggling with a bit of the ol' internalized homophobia, but I think he's going to be OK.
posted by Nomyte on Mar 24, 2013 - 17 comments

Susan Calman describes some of the legal restrictions of "civil partnerships", why she should never be allowed to get married, and why she loves her wife. A 30 minute podcast from BBC Radio 4.
posted by Stark on Feb 20, 2013 - 14 comments

At last night's Golden Globe Awards, actress Jodie Foster was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement award. During her speech, the notoriously private actress touched on the very notion of privacy, her sexuality, and the difficulty of being a public person with a normal life. Reactions have been mixed. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie on Jan 14, 2013 - 205 comments

Coming Out to My Child
posted by cthuljew on Dec 19, 2012 - 22 comments

"Look, goddamn it, I’m homosexual, and most of my friends are Jewish homosexuals, and some of my best friends are black homosexuals, and I am sick and tired of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading bullshit about me and my friends." - Merle Miller.

In 1970, two years after Stonewall, Joseph Epstein wrote a cover story for Harper’s Magazine, Homo/hetero: The struggle for sexual identity, that came to chilling conclusions: "I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth." His incendiary language prompted author/journalist/writer Merle Miller to come out of the closet in the New York Times Magazine, with an angry and poignant plea for dignity, understanding and respect: "What It Means to Be a Homosexual." 40 years later, that essay helped inspire the launch of the "It Gets Better" campaign. Via [more inside]
posted by zarq on Oct 17, 2012 - 62 comments

"I'm a 41 year old mom of two teenage boys. My oldest is gay and has the full support of both of his parents and his brother. If your family won't accept you, in honor of the day, I will be happy to virtually adopt you if you want to come out to a family that will accept you no matter what. "
posted by yankeefog on Oct 12, 2012 - 27 comments

Benji Schwimmer, the winner of So You Think You Can Dance's second season, is a West Coast Swing choreographer and dancer, serves as artistic director for LeAnn Rimes and Paula Abdul, and co-choreographed US figure skater Jeremy Abbott's short routine. Raised in an observant Latter-Day Saints household, Benji served a two-year mission in Mexico. On May 30, Benji recorded an interview lasting nearly 5 1/2 hours in which he described his attempts to reconcile his sexual identity with his faith and, for the first time, stated publicly that he is gay. [more inside]
posted by catlet on Jun 14, 2012 - 33 comments

Why Would Heavenly Father Do That? After 20 years as a married Mormon living the plan of happiness, a gay man comes out to his family and his church, and blogs about it, with special attention to the question of "Mormon beards": "Why do gay Mormon men keep marrying Mormon women?" Holly Welker, a straight Mormon woman formerly engaged to a gay Mormon man, calls for an end to beards.
posted by escabeche on May 15, 2011 - 109 comments

Ricky Martin is a fortunate homosexual man.
posted by greekphilosophy on Mar 29, 2010 - 219 comments

Well, here goes. I really resent the term, but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted. I’m gay. From some seventy years of personal experience, I can tell you that there’s not much “gay” about being homosexual. For the first twenty years of my life, I had to live in the shadows, in a culture that was — at least outwardly — totally hostile to any hint of that variation of life-style. James Randi (previously), at age 81, has come out. He discusses the announcement in more detail on the JREF podcast For Good Reason.
posted by Horace Rumpole on Mar 21, 2010 - 144 comments

Gareth Thomas is the first Welshman to have played in 100 rugby union test matches for his country. He also played in three tests for the British and Irish Lions on their tour of New Zealand in 2005, captaining the side in two of those matches. The 6'3", 226 lbs. utility back now plays for the Cardiff Blues. At one point, the Welsh rugby legend held the try-scoring record for Wales. In today's Daily Mail, Thomas revealed he is gay. [more inside]
posted by jleisek on Dec 19, 2009 - 51 comments

"This is for the guy who needed a card to come out to his parents." (Youtube) David Ellis Dickerson draws on his previous job as a Hallmark greeting card writer to create funny, poignant cards for people with unconventional greeting card emergencies (but he won't do cards aimed at making people feel bad). [more inside]
posted by cybercoitus interruptus on Oct 12, 2009 - 46 comments

Jamiel Terry, the gay son of charismatic anti-gay activist and Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, wrote an article for Out magazine about growing up in a fundamentalist household. Randall Terry responded to his son's article. Interviews with Randall and Jamiel about the exchange.
posted by Falconetti on Nov 17, 2006 - 106 comments

The Fine Art of Being Come Out To: A Straight Person's Guide to Gay Etiquette - yes, it's a bit dated, and no, I don't think too many people on MetaFilter need it. But it's a genre classic, with comprehensive coverage including advice for detailed coming out scenarios, weddings (both yours and theirs), and those ever-pesky language issues, all with good humor and a distinct lack of scolding.
posted by brett on Sep 19, 2006 - 55 comments

Boston Herald sports reporter outs himself in print and asks why people in the world of sports still have to hide. Frankly, I'm out because I can't come up with a single logical reason why I should have denied myself the right to live and work as openly and freely as everyone else. Nor should anyone find a reason why an openly gay athlete should be denied the right to play a team sport without fear of becoming a target of prejudice or physical harm. See Outsports for more info on the subject, and an interesting pro and con on whether gay baseball players should come out.
posted by amberglow on Sep 30, 2003 - 59 comments

There is a conspiracy theory that has been making the rounds on the net for quite some time now. In it, the actor Elijah Wood (Frodo) and Dominic Monaghan (Merry) are a gay couple that have been together since the filming of The Lord of the Rings. And they want to come out...but contracts and a whole lot of money at stake are keeping them in. So what do they do? Start testing the waters by infiltrating a gay gossip site called Data Lounge. Test the waters. Get media attention brought to them so they can out themselves as smoothly as possible and not get in trouble. Going on for some time now, the saga is up to thread 14 and shows no sign of slowing down. There are cryptic posts, shoutouts through clothing, PR beardings, interviews, sheep, photographs, insiders and trolls. And the strangest thing of all is that some of the proof is strangely compelling. Examples of all this and the "proofs" can be found here.

So after looking at many of the "facts", do you think it possible that two young actors might be trying to test the waters to come out in a novel fashion? And more importantly this all raises the question; do you think mainstream America (and the world in general) is ready to accept young openly gay men in cinema as leading men? Or is it career suicide?
posted by Windigo on Feb 4, 2003 - 54 comments

Do Gays in powerful positions have obligation to "out" themselves? "It's time for our public figures to stop hiding [in the closet] and for journalists to stop helping them."
posted by darren on Mar 2, 2001 - 55 comments

Here's an 'update' on the gay highschool football capitan that decided to come out of the closet and was warmly accepted, blah blah blah. I was reading this and I realized that I have absolutely *no* idea how my friends would react if I, or anyone else, 'came out'. Although I knew a few gays while I was growing up in the states, I do not know a single gay person in Poland. It made me think...
posted by jedrek on Apr 27, 2000 - 1 comment

A popular highschool student comes out and recives a lot of support from his fellow students, parents and teachers. Now, is this really SO strange in American that it deserves an article of this lenght? The strangest thing is that it reads like a piece from The Onion.
posted by jedrek on Apr 7, 2000 - 18 comments