Ask the Flying Monkey! (March 17, 2010)

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Contact me here (and be sure and include your city and state and/or country!)

Q: Oh wingéd primate, can you answer my query? I have often heard about celebrities that "everybody" knows are gay, but are not out to the public. Is "everybody" ever right, or is it all rumor? How does "everybody" even know? In respect to your policy, any example you give can be of celebrities who are now officially out. — Kaci, Kentucky

A: Is “everybody” right when they say someone is gay, or are they just repeating rumors? It kinda depends.

To be fair, there are plenty of closeted celebrities who are quite open in their private lives — on movie sets and at semi-private Hollywood parties. (Many of these celebrities used to be completely open even in Hollywood restaurants, West Hollywood streets, but that's changed in the era of Perez.)

It stands to reason that there are plenty people who have attended these events who could say, with some authority, "Oh, yeah, that person is totally gay."

Then there are, of course, the people that actually have sex with these celebrities — dates and hook-ups and the like. They're also in, um, a position to know the truth — as are any very close friends to whom they might kiss-and-tell.

These folks are the source of on set of "gay" rumors. But there's another set of rumors that is much more ambiguous: the person who sees a celebrity at a gay bar, who may be straight, but out with gay friends. Then there's the friend of a friend of a friend who knows someone who had sex with a particular actor — but this method of sharing information didn't work when we all played the whispering game in kindergarten, so what makes you think it works as an adult?

There are also people who flat-out lie, because someone "looks" gay, or because of wishful thinking.

The problem is, when it comes to "gay" rumors, you never which "everyone" is the authority.

Years ago, around 1990, I was part of an activist group that was told by a national group that we needed to pressure celebrities to come out. They sent us a list of “closeted” celebrities, and they assured us that they were "absolutely positively sure" that every single person on that list was gay.

I still have the letter, and reading the names now is kind of fascinating, because many of the celebrities have, in fact, since come out: David Geffen, Kelly McGillis, Greg Louganis, Linda Hunt, Stephen Sondheim, k.d. lang, Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin, Jim J. Bullock, Melissa Etheridge, George Michael, and the Indigo Girls.

(Incidentally, was there really a time when Jim J. Bullock, Melissa Etheridge, and the Indigo Girls weren't out?!?)

Gay

But there are other names on the list that I was assured were “absolutely, positively” gay — but who aren’t: Whitney Houston, Ron Reagan, Jr., Don Johnson, Rob Lowe, Burt Reynolds, Sylvester Stallone, Dolly Parton, Debbie Reynolds, Sharon Gless, Tom Selleck, Olivia Newton John, Julie Andrews, Robert Downey Jr., Richard Gere, and Diane Sawyer.

In other words, “everyone” had about a success rate of about 50%, which I think is about right.

Not gay

Next Page! Tom Hanks goes gay (fifteen years late!)