It was not exactly a surprise, but CNN anchor Anderson Cooper announced today that indeed he is gay.
This is far from the career death sentence that it would have been just a few years ago, but Cooper’s announcement took great courage nonetheless. It is difficult for gay children and teens to develop confidence and self-esteem when gay adults who have achieved success, fame and respect in their fields remain closeted out of fear and uncertainty. If there is nothing wrong with being gay, they think, then why are prominent gays hiding it?
Well, we do know the answer, and that the societal problem isn’t gays, but bigotry. That is why Cooper’s actions are so important. His openness about his sexual orientation challenges both the fear and the bigotry, and gives young gays a mainstream role model of substance and character.
Bravo.
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Source: The Daily Beast
Graphic: Media Bistro
Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at jamproethics@verizon.net.
Ethics Alarms 
Good for him. Too bad fear of repercussions must be involved.
Ehtics hero.
Raising the issue: Who will be the first network anchor to admit to being dyslexic?
Fun fact: Anderson Cooper.
Dyslexics of the world untie! I don’t watch 360 but I used to watch all of Anderson’s news reports on location. Anderson is awesome and would still be awesome even if he weren’t gay.
Good for AC.
What a well-crafted coming out email by AC. Kudos!
Oh my god his horrible!!! What a horrible example he is setting for America’s children! Now they all will think they can grow up to be a successful combat correspondant snd jornalist as long as you ade driven work hard!! This is horrible!
I kind thought he was, but never mattered. I can see his point about keeping his personal life private. His focus was on the stories-very rarely anything personal. Very professional.
In the wake of braver souls Rachel Maddow, Ellen DeGeneras, and Don Lemonn, this may seem to be no big deal. But it is a big deal.
It sure is.
Maybe he’s a hero. Or maybe he’s just self-serving. He stayed in the closet while that was convenient for him and because that was what was best for his career. Maybe he’s only coming out of the closet now because times have changed and that’s what is best for his career. Maybe he was afraid that if he stayed in the closet too long that he would eventually be outted and then gays would turn on him for being a coward. I’m not blaming him. I guess he did the right thing. But why is he a hero for hiding in the closet all this time and just now coming out when the coast is clear and gays are finally accepted? At this point, it’s not even a big deal. And I’d hardly characterize it as heroic. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, but he let others pave the way and acted out of self-interest.
How is it self-interest? CNN is in the ratings toilet; let’s see how this affects him. This isn’t without risks. Who “paved the way”? Who is the other network anchor who came out as gay while he still had his job? Cooper never denied being gay, nor was he obligated to specify his sexual preferences at all. There was no pressure on him. Gays are not “finally accepted.” They are more accepted than they used to be. I’d estimate that at least 50% of the male actors in Hollywood, most male figure skaters and gymnasts, a substantial percentage of female athletes, most male dancers, costume designers and choreographers are gay—if they are all accepted, then why are so many of them closeted? Because they know it would hurt their career to come out.
If you don’t think it’s a big deal for Cooper,with substantial risks and speculative benefits at best you’re naive.
But hey, maybe an anonymous “friend” of Cooper’s will leak to the press what his “real” thinking was. That’s your style, right?
Who paved the way? How about all the other gays that have long been out and open in the entertainment industry. You really think it hurts a celebrity’s career to come out as a gay? I’m not a believer in that theory. In fact, I think it made Ellen Degenre’s career. She’s an atrocious comedian, not funny by many people’s standards and she’s been very successful due to a loyal following of people who admire her guts and spirit.
Furthermore, you said yourself it was “not exactly a surprise.” So if everybody already knows (I certainly thought so) what’s the big deal? Where’s the risk?
Again. I’m not criticizing anything he did. I made that clear. I just don’t think it’s this big heroic thing. Nobody made a big deal and said Ricky Martin or Lance Bass of N’Sync was a big hero for coming out.
les, coming out rather famously stunted Ellen’s career http://www.wmagazine.com/celebrities/2007/03/ellen_degeneres
she is successful despite that because, although, as you say, she is not funny by many people’s standards, she is funny by the standards of many, many more. She doesn’t only have a cult following. I love Ellen’s comedy and I am not gay, nor do I care that she is since it is not what makes her funny.
Ellen’s biggest virtue is that she is so obviously a really, really nice, kind, gentle, loving person, and that has done more for the image of gays than her success. Plus she was the funniest fish I’ve ever seen.
Yeah, okay, I guess you might be right about that. That was late 90’s and gay rights awareness isn’t what it is today. I’d never even heard of Ellen until she came out, so I’d always assumed that it was the match that lit her career, but I guess that’s not entirely accurate. But I don’t remember a lot of Ellen-hating back then either. With stand-up and comedy, it’s hard to say exactly what scuttles a career. Look at Dane Cook and Chris Rock– once mighty titans whose careers are now in a downward spiral. Ellen might have taken an immediate, gut-reaction hit in ratings because of coming out, but ultimately I still think it helped her because it put her face in front of a lot of us who’d barely heard of her. And things have changed now. I heard Ricky Martin got a definite career boost after coming out. From my perception, Ellen will always be the “first”, the earliest I can remember, so it’s not surprising she had it a bit harder than those who followed.
“Ellen might have taken an immediate, gut-reaction hit in ratings because of coming out, but ultimately I still think it helped her because it put her face in front of a lot of us who’d barely heard of her.”
How exactly did that help her? As far as I can tell, it only garnered her another non-fan who has nothing nice to say about her talent but is quick to say all kinds of nasty things in a thread that isn’t even about Ellen. Doesn’t seem tremendously helpful if I am Ellen.
That immediate gut reaction you mention lasted 3 years. A 3 year gap at what should have been the height of her career could not have been easy to recover from. I know a good number of executives that were unable to recover from shorter gaps. I think it is a testament to Ellen that she made it through to become even more popular rather than a statement about how easy it was to overcome. It wasn’t Ellen-haters that did her in. It was boardroom suits. I wasn’t in the room, so I can’t say what they were thinking. Having been in many boardrooms, I can guess though. Even today, there is risk in coming out. You can marginalize it if you want but then, you are not the one having to take the risk so it is easy to marginalize.
Publicly standing up and taking sides on any contentious issue that has people deeply divided in ways often expressed with anger or violence is a risk whether you are a celebrity or not.
I agree with you that things are better today but they are still not great. Being openly gay is still a battle whether you are in high school hallways or the dreaded Public Eye. I highly doubt there will be zero consequences for Anderson. They may not be obvious to his audience but I bet he could tell us a few stories 5 years from now.
Brava. I usually can figure out where most outlier opinions come from, but les’s argument that it isn’t brave and and exemplary conduct for a pubic figure to make a potentially career-harming revelation when he or she isn’t being forced to by a scandal or some other pressure made no sense to me at the start of this thread, and it makes les sense to me now. The accompanying theory that there is no hard bias against gays in public and private live is even more fanciful. Good comment.
Thanks, Jack…. can you believe we are on the same page?? (grin)
Oh, sure I can! I assume we’re always on the same page, except when you write to tell me I’m full of crap.
Les, how do you justify the assertion that Anderson Cooper was “hiding in the closet all this time.” He never denied his sexual identity. As Jack said in the first line of the post, “It was not exactly a surprise” that Cooper admitted to being gay. I never thought of him as closeted, and I assumed it was common knowledge that he was gay. He just didn’t talk about it, because he didn’t frigging have to.
If another person in broadcasting is generally assumed by his audience and colleagues to be straight, but he doesn’t make a big show of announcing his heterosexuality, does that mean he’s in the closet about being straight? I don’t think that Anderson Cooper was especially courageous for making his homosexuality publicly known. I think what was more courageous was the years that he spent neither denying it nor broadcasting it, because that put him in the position of incurring the wrath both of homophobes and of people like you, Les, who would brand the man as a coward for standing up for the rights of equality and privacy at the same time.
I think that’s often the more courageous action, because it’s far too easy to forget that the true indicator of social progress on sexual identity will not be a time when every gay person in the public eye feels that they can stand up and be counted, but rather it will be a time when every such person feels that they don’t have to do that, because their sexual identity isn’t important to the way they’re perceived by the public.
Ed, let’s not get carried away. I never criticized him or called him a coward. I just said I didn’t think it was this big heroic thing he did. He was fully in his rights to handle things the way he did. But I’m not going to award him some hero medal for very reasonably acting in his own self-interest. To me, a hero is a person who acts out of interest for others and at great risk to themselves. I don’t see that Cooper’s actions in withholding his identity as a gay man until the year 2012 merit that distinction. He’s not going to be fired. His ratings won’t go down. It wasn’t a big surprise. And it’s a nice thing. But it’s also kind of unremarkable.
Les9, what makes you think “…the coast is clear…”?
I think it’s safe to call Anderson a self-interested ethics hero. Being self-interested does not preclude someone from being a hero.
Bingo!
I agree that self-interest doesn’t preclude someone from being a hero. But nor does it make a hero. He’s not a hero to me, but that’s because I have a specific idea and definition of hero. I guess he can be your hero though.
Humpty-Dumptyism. A hero is someone who does good and noble things that benefit others beyond what is required of him, despite risk or reality of pain or other unpleasant consequences. Anderson qualifies. Your “specific idea” is irrelevant.
Yes, my specific idea is irrelevant. Just as irrelevant as yours I imagine.
I am with les9. I am happy that Cooper can go public with the particular truth about himself that he formerly kept private, and not suffer for it. I will be happy for all others like him, who also go public without suffering what in past times Cooper might have risked suffering by going public (or worse). Perhaps Cooper is one of the earliest of America’s sexual minorities in a “post-persecution era,” whose public admission is greeted with acceptance that signals (perhaps unexpectedly soon – perhaps unexpectedly, period) a decisive long-term shift in public attitudes and consequences. But for reasons including and related to some les9 gave, I do not see Cooper as an exemplar, a hero, for saying publicly, “I am gay.” He is no pioneer, no trail-blazer.
I will admit that my thinking follows an article of faith (and hope) that one’s “sexual identity” – regardless of that identity; regardless of one’s personal preferences about privacy, and regardless of what stays private and what goes public about anyone (or how), in any society – will always be important to the way one is perceived by the public, until all human life is asexual, non-erotic.
I don’t see your logic. He’s a trailblazer by definition, unless you can point to a media figure of comparable stature who has come out. (Neil Patrick Harris doesn’t count.) It’s NOT a “post-persecution era” for gays. Rick Santorum and Bachmann had millions of votes for president. Many gays in public positions are closeted. Most gay performers and sports figures are. Gay marriage initiatives have failed in every referendum. Why do you think this is? Do you know how many posts on conservative blogs attack Rachel Maddow for her sexual orientation?
You and I just accept different definitions of trailblazer (I’ve always used a hyphen in that trail-blazing context, but I’m a virtual virgin in the blogosphere.) I know who Neil Patrick Harris is, but I don’t understand why you say he doesn’t count. A “media figure of comparable stature” may be another definition we don’t agree on, thus leading to accepting different definitions of “trail-blazer.” What about Barney Frank? Freddie Mercury? Rock Hudson? They aren’t “in the media” like Cooper, but certainly are (or were) “media figures,” in more hostile (for them and their identities) times than the present. I think Cooper still has far to go to attain the stature of any of them, never mind how their stature may have once cloaked, then publicly validated their identities and discredited most if not all sexual identity-related bias against them.
If you don’t agree that the U.S. culture is not already well along in “evolving” from one era to another that is post-persecution as far as sexual minorities are concerned, then again, it’s a half-full-vs.-half-empty-glass difference in perspectives. So what, about Santorum and Bachmann? I would not be surprised if a large number of votes cast for them were by “those” minorities. So what, about those still in the closet? The law protects them now; there just isn’t yet enough evidence of that to give enough confidence to many of the closeted – and of course, there will be more true trail-blazers (who can and will lose – and then, gain back – more than Anderson Cooper has ever stood to lose). The mayor of Houston, a virtual certain rising star in politics in Texas and nation-wide, has a same-sex partner. The failed marriage initiatives are largely because they’ve been run as cram-downs, from both sides. But wait: Too many people don’t vote, don’t care enough, so only bad laws go into force (BUT WAIT: Votes on THESE issues only over-energize the bigots, so whether turnout is low or turnout is high, the correct laws never go into force, it seems. WHICH IS IT??) Bloggers attack Rachel Maddow – who’d’a thunk? (that is sarcasm) She won’t lose her job or general public approval due to those attacks; her enemies give her free extra visibility and promotion.
Until we see self-outing on a large, non-coordinated scale by individuals honestly stating that they were emboldened specifically by Anderson Cooper’s self-outing, I will stand by my judgment that Cooper is not an ethics hero for coming out. I wish Cooper well. From what I have seen of his work, he does well – not a paragon of objectivity necessarily, but that isn’t the standard anymore anyway, for the media jobs he has had and is likely to have from here on.
1. There are virtually no authority figure, high-visibility general audience gay role models. Harris is a boyish, fey presence who is hardly a leading man. Freddy Mercury was a rock singer (one of the greatest), but they are not mainstream figures by any means—sexual variations are standard in pop music. Hudson is definitely no role model—he came out after he was dying of AIDS, not while he was an active star. Plenty of actors have been revealed as gay AFTER they were stars and out of the limelight—Raymond Burr, Barbara Stanwyck, Hudson, Robert Reed, Van Johnson. That’s not remotely like coming out at the top.
2. You’ve got to be kidding about Frank. So he’s openly gay in a super-liberal Massachusetts District–it was probably an asset at the polls.
3. I didn’t say it wasn’t evolving. I said we aren’t post-persecution, and we aren’t. It will evolve faster when the Travoltas and Cruises don’t feel they have to engineer elaborate covers for their sexuality, and the Spaceys and Fosters refuse to acknowledge what everyone already knows.
I guess you’ve never heard of:
Ian McKellan
Barney Frank
Lance Bass
Ricky Martin
George Micheal
Ellen De Genres
John Waters
etc., etc, etc,
You’re saying Gandolf wasn’t a high-visibility general audience role model? You need to get out of your hobbit hole more often.
Jack, I take issue with your characterization of Neil Patrick Harris as a “…boyish, fey presence…”. In my not-so-humble opinion, you misuse the term, “fey”. It’s an ancient Celtic description of people who have “the second sight”, “the vision”, the ability to foretell events.
I’m the father of a half-Irish “fey” daughter who constantly amazes, surprises, even sometimes scares me a little, with that psychic ability…and constantly delights me.
I once had a “fey” Irish lady friend who stayed in frequent touch with her identical twin sister 500 miles away in Denver — without telephone or e-mail.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy…” — (Hamlet, Act I, sc. v).
Why I think AC is a hero is the fact that he is not just an anchor for his show but he is also a foreign correspondant. He reports in some dangerous parts of the world. Places that have problems with civil disobediance and human rights violations. The Middle East is much different on homosexuality than in the U.S. and Europe. If they know he is gay, he may have some situations which could be extremely unsettling. Coming out in the U.S. or Europe is easy compared to many countries. However, in some parts of the world being gay is a death sentence. That makes him courageous in my book.
Well when you put it that way, I guess I have to agree too. He does visit the Middle East and acceptance of homosexuality is a completely different ball of wax there. I don’t think his coming out will affect his audience much in the U.S. but it certainly might put restrictions or cause extra problems with his work. It’s easy to forget the gay rights movement is far from being worldwide.
Michael and les9, I have to take a wait-and-see approach on Cooper’s overseas work. Certainly it would show some bravery, now that he is out, to continue his work in the violently intolerant regions. But I’m so cynical, I can’t help wondering if he is angling not to go there anymore.