Anderson, We Hardly Knew Ye

We don’t have to guess at this anymore. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper “came out” to Daily Beast reporter Andrew Sullivan.

Though quite a few people knew this about him, the vast majority of us were dealing with guesswork or rumors. As a minority, gay people differ from most other groups in one critical respect. Members of racial minorities are “outed” at birth, and that status is almost impossible to hide. Gender is another difficult status to conceal, as is age, though less so. But “gayness” isn’t visibly obvious; it can be hidden, unless the individual chooses to reveal it.

In Cooper’s case, it represented an act of courage, because it clearly has an impact on his bread and butter: his audience. Those who believe homosexuality is a sin may now have doubts (or have their doubts reinforced) about the quality of his reporting. Some women fans may be disappointed to find that he’s “off the market.” But I would assume that for most of us in the modern world, it’s something we can accept.

The fact that Anderson is gay doesn’t change in any respect the quality of his reporting, his integrity or his bravery at war or disaster scenes. Those are facts that his audiences have seen with their own eyes. Sexual preference, when reduced to its essentials, “is what it is,” and doesn’t imply political positions or agendas. Blacks and Latinos complain often that they are treated as monolithic blocs by politicians, while the only real common denominator, in the end, is skin color. Culture is a factor, certainly, but that’s a social construct and can change over time. There are plenty of right-wing blacks and Latinos, as well as gay Republicans, whose voices are heard much more often now.

Homosexuality is not unknown, of course, in the rest of the animal kingdom, especially among mammals. Far from being a crime against nature, it actually seems to be part of nature. As for whether it’s “normal,” that word is interpreted by many to mean “correct” when it really should be “most common,” and as I have said in this space before, defining what’s “normal” (if you mean “correct”) in human sexuality is a treacherous road to go down.

So, thank you, Anderson, for clearing things up, and allowing us to move on – most of us, anyway.