No real surprise really i suppose.




news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8594121.stm

yes this was a real shock !!..not.

Good for him.

I don't get this idea of being 'proud' of your sexuality. It's not an achievement.

I'm personally rather disappointed by the Sun - surely this was begging for a Livin' La Vida Cocka headline?

Most of the world has probably forgotten who he was, so I guess he needs the publicity.

Coming out as gay could harm his career? In the 80s? Really? I thought that was the decade where it was cool to be gay. Boy George, Marylin, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Village People, Elton John, George Michael, Marc Almond, Jimmy Somerville, and countless others were shouting their gayness from the rooftops.

Perhaps the correct expression should be Ricky Martin "sashayed" out of the closet !!

I hate the term 'coming out of the closet' - it has negative connotations from the start. Forget about closets, cupboards and cubbyholes - just speak openly.

Sort of right Emma. Although most names you listed weren't bedroom poster material and George Michael came out only a few years back.

Prunella Minge wrote:
I don't get this idea of being 'proud' of your sexuality. It's not an achievement.

Pru, with regards to your question above about being 'proud' of your sexuality, here's my own personal experience in that regard. Bear with me, as I'm sure I'm going to ramble a bit!

Like many gay people growing up in the 70s, I was aways terrified of my sexuality being found out, so as a teenager I was very much a loner. School was a very homophobic environment. My brother knew I was 'different' tho and I was frequently beaten up quite severely.

Then while still in my teens, my stepmum found some compromising letters I had written to a penfriend and I was immediately disowned by my whole family and thrown out of home. This was a very traumatic event, but I was not alone- it happened all the time- it happened to many friends of mine and other people I knew.

Then we had the 80s. In spite of the high profile nature of some gay performers such as Boy George, Marc Almond, the 80s was a very dark time to be gay. There was the rise of HIV/AIDS and the drip-drip of homophobic bile throughout the press was horrific (the 'Gay Plague' headlines etc). One of my friend's sisters refused to touch me because I was gay and would give her AIDS- attitudes like that were all over the place.

So anyway, for me and most gay people I knew at the time, all the above resulted in lots of us having a very bad self-image, low self-esteem etc. as that was the image we were fed about people like us.

So for me, when I went to gay pride events I realised that feeling proud of my sexuality was very liberating- it was a way of taking all that bad self-image and homophobia and turning it right on its head. I decided that I would embrace the thing so many people hated me for and become proud of it.

That for me is what it means to be 'proud' of my sexuality. It's all part of being proud of who you are in general, really.

I like the fact that many Gay Pride events have now dropped the word Gay from their name, and become more about diversity in its wider sense. I really enjoy Nottingham Pride- although it has a big LGBT element, it is now very much a family event with a huge diversity of people- love it!

On the subject of gay artists in the 80s, many did went to great lengths to hide their sexuality. Strange as it may seem, Marc Almond always dodged questions about his sexuality, altho it was fairly obvious. His record company went to great lengths to get him a 'girlfriend' to go out and about with. And Boy George didn't exactly shout it from the rooftops either, saying that he preferred a good cup of tea to sex. He also said once that he got no homophobic abuse when he was about town- but added that that was only because he was famous, and people regarded him as a pantomime dame and didn't feel threatened. He said it was very different for friends of his who were not in the public eye.

I am eternally grateful to artists like Jimmy Somerville and Marc Almond and Morrissey, whose songs gave me great strength in dark times, showing me that there were others like me out there.

Have a look at the video for Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy- it sums that whole period up so well in just a few minutes.



Finally, with regard to Ricky Martin I think that, altho he doesn't have much success in the UK, the point is that his main markets have always been in Central and South America. In a large part of that region society is very macho and not at all gay friendly, so it is a far bigger thing for him to do there than it would be for an artist who was mainly uk-based.

So I applaud Ricky Martin's decision, whatever his motives for doing so. I'm sure there will be young gay men and women across Latin America who will look to him in the way I looked to Jimmy and Marc back then.

Thanks for reading this far- I did ramble, didn't I!

Emma Bee wrote:


Coming out as gay could harm his career? In the 80s? Really? I thought that was the decade where it was cool to be gay. Boy George, Marylin, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Village People, Elton John, George Michael, Marc Almond, Jimmy Somerville, and countless others were shouting their gayness from the rooftops.

Emma, George Michael wasn't shouting his gayness from the rooftops. He did everything possible to hide it from the early 80's to the late 90's. It was only the fact that he was caught cottaging in a men's toilets that forced him to come out.

Also Boy George was very coy for a few years, with his "I'd rather have a cup of tea than sex" comments.

David; I was one of the very first gay rights champions - check out songs like Be Gay and Gay Girl from the 60s - yet, when my drama unfolded, I found the gay community were the least helpful and most abusive of all; dreading being linked by association with a paedophile. So my feelings towards the gay community are very mixed.

JK2006 wrote:
David; I was one of the very first gay rights champions - check out songs like Be Gay and Gay Girl from the 60s - yet, when my drama unfolded, I found the gay community were the least helpful and most abusive of all; dreading being linked by association with a paedophile. So my feelings towards the gay community are very mixed.

yes, I can understand your point of view, JK.

I'll check out the songs you mention,if I can find them.

Locked Out wrote:
Kudos to you, David, if you ranted you ranted eloquently.
And as an aside I thought he'd come out years ago,which just goes to show how well kept a "secret" his orientation was...

thank you LO. A favourable comment by you is something I appreciate, as you are a poster I always enjoy reading.

I also greatly enjoy Prunella's posts, so treated it as a genuine question, which I've no doubt it was.

So it wasn't a rant really, but just telling my own personal experience, which is just what it was. And that's all I can do. Others may have different experiences.

I have to say tho that I found myself getting rather emotional while writing it, and when re-watching the Smalltown Boy video. All these years later it struck me just what a powerful representation it was of those times.

I am a happy bod these days and have learned to take all the things that happened to me (and there was much more than I told) as things that have made me who I am- and I like who I am

I also think that being the victim of serious discrimination myself has made me very passionate about any form of discrimination.

Anyway, this was about Ricky Martin, not me

david wrote:


thank you LO. A favourable comment by you is something I appreciate...[/quote]

Don't mention it, David, you and I are usually in complete accord {apart from the Bronski Beat bit, Jimmy's voice always frankly made me want to end it all...}, and if I'm often silent in response to your postings it's because you've already summed my viewpoint up better than I could myself. But thank you for the compliment.

david wrote:
Thanks for reading this far- I did ramble, didn't I!

I'd say "more cruised, David, than rambled !"

ha ha, ITK!

that made me larf!

Apologies for any offence, David, none was intended. That's a very understandable and touching explanation. I just find it a bit, well, iffy when a celeb like Ricky suddenly decides he's proud about what he's hidden - rather pointlessly - for years! But I suspect even that sounds a bit facetious, so please ignore this idiot!

hey Pru, no offence taken at all

I saw it as a fair question, but one that I had direct experience of, so just wanted to share that.