Zachary Quinto Comes Out- Page 4

[strummergirl]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 12:08am

"Ryan Reynolds, too."

Wait... what? First I heard of that one and I read the blind items columns like a fiend.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 11:04am

I thought the same thing, Strummer.

As for Cooper and his brother who committed suicide, yes...he has talked about it quite a bit publicly. He has NOT, in fact, spoken of his sexuality, excpet in one moment, arguing with someone (Pat Robertson, maybe?) when he said, 'We pay taxes, too.'

The excuse I've heard given is not actually about journalistic integrity. It's about his ability to go to different parts of the world to cover stories. I think he believes coming out would make it much more difficult for him to be able to go to places at are inhospitable to gay men. Maybe that's Bull****. But I kind of get it.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 11:41am

Forgive my posting one right after the other, but this article from HuffPo was reeeeeally interesting in regards to this topic.
Yes. We hear you now.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 11:59am

Ooh, thanks for that. A couple of things.

It also bears noting that my own community was not much more supportive than the mainstream media. My fellows in the gay blogosphere were considerably more vociferous about my weight gain the previous January than they were about my coming out. No confetti, tambourines or coming out cakes for me. If we really want our public figures to come out of the closet, we have to be careful that when they do take this huge step, we don't greet the news with a jaded, "Yeah, it's about time. What took him so long?" or, "Who cares?" or, "As if we didn't know..." It is a considerable risk, both financially and personally, for many people, and a little kindness would be appreciated from the homefront.

I no idea that he had come out or that he was even gay, so I'll offer him a belated "good for you," although I'm not really sure I'm a good representative of the gay community at large. This comment and Kad's earlier one about feeling persecuted by the gay community for not going to the gym makes me think of the Armistead Maupin quote that Namo usually brings up on the board - "No, all gay men are NOT my brothers."

Back to the article, though. This part is gold -

So I'm gonna do this one more time, and I'm gonna do it right:

I am gay.

There, I said it. If it makes you uncomfortable, too bad. It's not going to change. I wouldn't change it if I could. And if you have a problem with it, it is because you are either ignorant, brainwashed or a latent homosexual yourself.


Updated On: 10/19/11 at 11:59 AM

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 12:38pm

Besides him being adorable, I feel a kinship to him. We both won awards in the 2001 Fringe Festival (me for acting, him for overall production), and then again in 2005! I think that means we're supposed to be married.

And I like what he has to say about showing a little kindness to people who do actually put their careers in some sort of jeopardy to be out publicly.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 12:45pm

I'm so sick that coming out for a celebrity has become a "damned if you do, damned if you dont" proposition.

I dont understand refusing to support someone's coming out because they didnt do it on your timeline or in the way you'd like.

I think it's great if coming out was so easy for you, but it isnt that way for everyone and they dont owe you a goddam thing...jesus effing christ!

A hypocritical outing of a republican bigot is a very different story.

Good for you Zach and Mark.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 12:48pm

I'm with you and Robbie, doodle.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 12:55pm

"I think it's great if coming out was so easy for you"

I would also like to point out that these men were out to the people who are important in their lives. They just weren't out to the press and the general public. And don't you think that's a different thing? Something very few people on here have had to deal with (and yes...I have had to decide how out I want to be in my career as an actor. And yes, it has affected my career that I've decided to be completely out).

So...we can all sit around and bitch. But the fact is, this level of out is something nearly every single person on this board will NEVER, EVER have to deal with.
Updated On: 10/19/11 at 12:55 PM

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 1:32pm

Zactly!

Besides...I didnt have a choice. I assumed you could tell from SPACE that I was gay.

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 2:56pm

Spacey was certainly out when I hung out with him several times in the late 70s-early 80s. (He's good friends of a gal pal of mine.) But I haven't seen him in quite a while. Maybe he went back in?

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 3:05pm

"And in any case he has given an answer: he told Playboy in 1999 that he's straight."
The Independent, 2007

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/19/11 at 3:21pm

Subsequently, he's had more complicated and convulted things to say about it.

We gay men have always proudly claimed you as a member of our tribe, and yet you don't proudly claim us back. Why?

Look, I might have lived in England for the last several years but I'm still an American citizen and I have not given up my right to privacy.

But that's where we differ. I don't think being gay is a private matter. Heterosexuals don't consider their heterosexuality itself a private matter. I'm not asking you what goes on behind a locked door anymore than I would ask a heterosexual. I'm not asking if you're a top or bottom. That's none of my business.

Let's enlarge the subject even more. I think what we have seen in terms of gay teenagers committing suicide because of bullying is anguishing. I think young people, if they are feeling like they are confused, need to know that there are people to talk to and that there are places they can go and not feel alone. But I feel that they have just as many rights as I do to not be bullied. And I don't understand people who say, "Well, this is a terrible thing that is happening to this young person whose life is being exposed," and then turn around and do it to another person. People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box. It's just a line I've never crossed and never will.

Well, I don't equate my discussing this with you as bullying you. You are an accomplished grown man, not a fearful teenager. But would you do one of those "It Gets Better" videos? I think that would be great if you did one of those.

Yeah. Absolutely. I'd do one of those. But why is it in this country that kids might think it's OK to bully and make fun of somebody? I'll tell you why, because what do they see in the media happening all the time? In the media they seem to think that's OK So if we stop using sexuality as a weapon against people maybe everyone will eventually get cool with it.

But I'm not attacking you. I don't see sexuality as a weapon. I see it as a gift. Look, I know that being an actor—and all the emotion and sexuality and longing that is projected onto you in a role by an audience—complicates the issue in that you have to take into account their required complicity in the very essence of your art. No performance is complete until their belief is a part of it. But I stopped being an actor after I left Juilliard because I couldn't live a lie to enable myself to pretend. That was too much of a double whammy.

I don't live a lie. You have to understand that people who choose not to discuss their personal lives are not living a lie. That is a presumption that people jump to.

There are lies of omission. But I have never heard that you are at all hypocritical in your daily life with your close friends and family. You've admitted you're a political animal so you have to understand the social significance of your being more open when discussing this. But you've been great to keep this all on the record. I appreciate that. That speaks to your innate integrity.

Look, at the end of the day people have to respect people's differences. I am different than some people would like me to be. I just don't buy into that the personal can be political. I just think that's horse****. No one's personal life is in the public interest. It's gossip, bottom line. End of story. Now some people feed that. They'll go to the trendy restaurants where all the photographers are and then bitch about being famous. But if you don't want to feed that and you want your life to be based around what your work is then it ends there. Your saying that you are gay and that is how you walk about in the world and it has nothing to do with your true private life is a good distinction for you to draw. But it's not such a good distinction for other people. Personally, I don't really think that distinction exits. Look, I think finally this is a very important issue to be discussed. I do. Mainly because of how sad it is that young people in this country—and even around the world where they don't have the freedoms and rights we do—are being subjected to the kinds of abuse they are being subjected to. That's what is shameful.

The Daily Beast Updated On: 10/19/11 at 03:21 PM

[nygrl232]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 3:21am

>>I don't live a lie. You have to understand that people who choose not to discuss their personal lives are not living a lie. That is a presumption that people jump to.<<

That's a pretty excellent point. The fact that anyone has to be forced to do anything, whether be open or be secretive, is just depressing. I don't know what led society to this weird hypocrisy of obsessing over people's lives like this, demanding to know everything and waving around some moral code that is actually just curiosity that they could just tell themselves, 'eh, not my beeswax.' Imagine that.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 12:41pm

I don't know what led society to this weird hypocrisy of obsessing over people's lives like this, demanding to know everything and waving around some moral code that is actually just curiosity that they could just tell themselves, 'eh, not my beeswax.'

Since the dawn of communication, gossip has always been popular sport. Especially if it involves anyone with a high public profile. Human nature and the history of religious/political desire for power and control led society to this.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 1:14pm

At any rate, I'd call telling a world-wide publication that you're straight if you're not (or vice versa) "living a lie."

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 1:21pm

And from the dawn of time it has only been straight guys telling others to mind their own beeswax.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 1:22pm

I think I heard Lucy Ricardo say it once, though.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 1:37pm

Ultimately, Spacey is right. He has all the right to "privacy" he wants, but in the more abstract, everything he says there is a little silly. And I wonder if now I sound like a hypocrite, after saying I agree with Robbie and doodle. I do agree with their points, but when I look at the bigger picture I find I look at things a little differently.

First off, generally only closeted gay celebrities are that tight-lipped about their "private lives." Plenty of heterosexual celebrities do their best not to talk about who they are dating, but they don't refuse to simply acknowledge that they are heterosexual. And maybe Spacey knows that and doesn't care. Maybe he knows that and thinks that if he doesn't say it, people won't think it of him. Maybe he doesn't know it at all.

But to say that he doesn't buy into the fact that personal can be political just AFTER he complains about sexuality being used a weapon, to me, speaks to some kind of disconnect within him. Or maybe not. Maybe there's something more that he doesn't share, something that explains away that split, how he could once claim to be straight but now state nothing but still not think that to some degree he's living a lie.

But indeed, he has the right to live the way he lives, and if he feels he's taking a stand against the bullying masses by NOT acknowledging who he is, then it's his right to do so. But I don't think it's fair to turn it all around and lay everything on the obsession and hypocrisy of the public, because I don't really think it's what that is. I don't personally think any celebrity "owes" me or anyone else their public acknowledgement of their homosexuality, but as a gay person, I still can't help but wish that more people (younger and older, men and women) would just make the decision to live their lives more openly.

I guess what I'm trying to say while he's entitled to all the privacy he can make for himself, I don't think simple speculation about the sexuality of someone is automatically ugly or prurient. Maybe it's just because that I don't think being gay is ugly or prurient, even in the face of negativity, even in the face of a world that isn't always that accepting and accommodating of gay people. But, of course, I don't have a big movie career to protect.

At any rate, I'd rather think less about Kevin Spacey anyway and think more about actors like Neil Patrick Harris, Zachary Quinto, Sean Maher and the growing list full of others I haven't mentioned. It's people like them who can argue that the personal isn't political, because they're actually speaking truth to power. But somehow I suspect that these guys WOULDN'T argue that the personal isn't political.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 1:51pm

That's all really well said, PRS.

I'm not pretending the issue isn't complicated. I wish like hell that we lived in a world where no one gave a sh*t about anyone's sexual orientation. Failing that, I wish we lived in a world where all orientations were viewed equally and neutrally. But we don't.

So yeah, Spacey can do and say whatever he wants. But I also get to feel that by the things he says (and doesn't say), he's implying that my sexuality is shameful. And if he hears me saying it, he's welcome to disagree.

[doodlenyc]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 2:23pm

Why do I get the feeling that Spacey is playing both sides, or at least is trying to. By saying that he wants to keep his personal life private, he is essentially coming out to those who care, but not having to be on the cover of People over the fact.

Whatever he means by his mumbo jumbo reasoning, it's not coming from a place of pride...which is a shame.

[Jay Lerner-Z]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 2:59pm

That's great food for thought, Phyllis.

As one who aspires to "stardom", I wonder how I might handle the situation. You pointed out that heterosexual celebrities don't simply refuse to acknowledge that they're straight - that was a real a-ha moment for me, as Oprah might say. I would never ever pretend to be straight, but at the same time I actually would like to have a private life too - I generally detest celebrity culture, although as an avid viewer of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, I am definitely living a double life on that front...

no doubt this is all moot, but a boy can dream.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 3:28pm

It's something every actor at every level really does need to think about. Because, trust me, this kind of SH*T shows up even in the most obscure careers. The number of managers/agents/other types of representation that have flat out said to me that I need to 'play it down' astonishes me. And I am truly a nobody in this business. I even know representatives for glass-closeted actors who fully encourage their actors to 'not talk about it.' These are actors that everyone here knows...not obscure character types. And what kills me is that my acquaintance (sp??) is out and fully supports out actors...just not his clients. Or...certain of his clients.

It is a F*CKed up business. And the pressure to stay in the closet and protect the brand (or potential brand) is huge. I also imagine that Spacey is in a really weird generational vortex. I can't imagine what he's thinking about these younger actors who are simply making no big deal out of this. Especially Quinto, who I think could be this generation's Spacey (talent and success-wise). At least Quinto will never have to go on a date with Helen Hunt.

[nygrl232]

Posted: 10/20/11 at 4:08pm

It's all about keeping people fearful and controlled. They tell people how to act and how much to weigh and to carve themselves like clay into a standard that was created by some probable nutcase.