Dear Newly Out Celebrity: No, You Were Not Always Out

Here we go again.

When the pop singer Tiffany recently accidentally outed New Kids on the Block singer Jonathan Knight on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live, it was admittedly one of the more unusual outings in recent years. And it immediately had all the makings of classy cultural moment: no publicist’s spin, no fake heterosexual relationship “leaked” to the press. Just Tiffany apologizing via Twitter, and Knight immediately accepting the apology.

Then things suddenly got stupid. On Saturday, in a blog post on the subscription-only New Kids on the Block website, Knight posted a full statement:

“I have never been outed by anyone but myself! I did so almost twenty years ago. I never know that I would have to do it all over again publicly just because I reunited with NKOTB! I have lived my life very openly and have never hidden the fact that I am gay! Apparently the pre requiste to being a gay public figure is to appear on the cover of a magazine with the caption ‘I am gay’. I apologize for not doing so if this is what was expected! My belief is that you live your life by example, and not by a caption on a magazine! If there ever has been any confusion about my sexuality, then you are someone that doesn’t even know me!”

“I love living my life being open and honest, but at this time I choose not to discuss my private life any further! My fellow band members don’t discuss their private lives with their loved ones and I don’t feel that just because I am gay, I should have to discuss mine!”

A celebrity’s coming out is almost always a good thing under any circumstances. One of the huge challenges of the GLBT movement has been getting people to understand that gay people aren’t some scary “Other” who want to destroy everything they hold dear; we’re people they know and love and respect.

A celebrity’s coming out is also almost always a traumatic thing, since they have major career considerations the many of us don’t have. When your very status as a celebrity requires a lot of money – and supports the livelihood of dozens or even hundreds of other people – the stakes really are higher.

The not-so-new New Kids on the Block, with Jonathan, far left

So while Jonathan’s courage is definitely to be applauded (and we appreciate that the man has an anxiety disorder), part of his “official” announcement makes my head hurt, even without all the exclamation points. It’s basically a combination of self-serving historical revisionism and nonsense.

Incidentally, the only reason I’m writing about this at all is that this seems to be a pattern among celebrities: after years if not decades of avoiding the “gay” question, they finally do acknowledge they’re gay, then immediately argue they were never “in” to begin with.

In 2007, after David Hyde Pierce finally acknowledged (to AfterElton.com) that he was gay, he subsequently argued that he’d never been closeted. “My life is an open book,” he'd said prior to the confirmation. “Just don’t expect me to read it to you.”

And then there’s Will & Grace’s Sean Hayes, who, after a decade of dancing around the “Are you gay?” question, last year famously declared, “I was never in… Never.”

Even Johnny Weir, who’s also spent almost the last decade dancing around the “Are you gay?” question, had the cojones to say, “When was I ‘in’?” after he came out in a recent memoir.

Interestingly, Adam Lambert, who, post coming out, also said, “I was never in the closet,” can make a relatively convincing case this is true: his fame exploded in a matter of days and he was mid-competition (on American Idol) when speculation about his sexuality began, and he clarified things pretty quickly once the competition was over.

Next Page! Jonathan Knight's gay lover tells all!