Surprise: Anderson Cooper is Gay

Following a host of other out celebs (such as Matt Bomer, Jim Parsons, and Zachary Quinto) Anderson Cooper came out as gay today in a published e-mail to Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Beast. You can see the email here. I almost didn’t write anything about it, because even the novelty of coming out quietly is starting to wear off, and that’s really quite encouraging.

Who in the World is Richard Grenell?

Richard Grenell

One of the strange things about presidential campaigns is that they will often thrust previously unknown people into the spotlight. I mean, how many people could name Alaska’s governor prior to 2008? Not a lot. Romney’s not even the official nominee yet and his campaign’s already been hit with issues surrounding one of the less well known members of his campaign. Until yesterday, Richard Grenell was Mitt Romney’s spokesperson for foreign policy and national security. If Romney is elected, Grenell probably would have held a high ranking position in his administration. He was going to be a major player. Oh, did I mention Grenell is gay?

Gay Sex on T.V.

***This article contains spoilers for the HBO series Game of Thrones through Season 2, Episode 3***

In the past couple of decades, LGBT representation in mainstream media of the U.S. has progressed in leaps and bounds. We have popular television shows that focus exclusively on gay and lesbian communities, shows with gay gangsters, gay slobs, and gay teenagers, one Oscar winning movie about a gay political figure and another one about gay cowboys. As for real life people in the media, there are out news anchors and political commentators, out actors and actresses, and out musicians. We’ve come a long way from Jodie Dallas and Xena; it would be easy to think that we’ve achieved equal representation in the media. Unfortunately, we haven’t.