In an article on The Daily Beast published this morning by his friend, the journalist Andrew Sullivan, CNN reporter Anderson Cooper has finally come out of the closet as gay. Though it’s been an open secret for years and, as he explains, Cooper has realized that he did not want to seem as if he was hiding his homosexuality out of shame. You can read Anderson’s beautiful coming-out email, published with permission, in part below and it continues after the jump:
I’ve always believed that who a reporter votes for, what religion they are, who they love, should not be something they have to discuss publicly. As long as a journalist shows fairness and honesty in his or her work, their private life shouldn’t matter. I’ve stuck to those principles for my entire professional career, even when I’ve been directly asked “the gay question,” which happens occasionally. I did not address my sexual orientation in the memoir I wrote several years ago because it was a book focused on war, disasters, loss and survival. I didn’t set out to write about other aspects of my life.
Recently, however, I’ve begun to consider whether the unintended outcomes of maintaining my privacy outweigh personal and professional principle. It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something – something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true. Keep reading »
