Wait, what? Really??
I guess there’s my answer, then!
Well then why discuss anything about any celebrity’s life? But we speculate on who’s dating who, who’s divorcing, who’s doing what to what, who’s stabbing who in the back of a movie picture set.
As a gay male, I find it odd that everything else is up for grabs but this. I think it’s laughable when Jodie Foster will declare her personal life off limits but then go into intimate detail about the birth of her daughter. I think THAT is a lot more personal then your sexual orientation.
OTOH, pregnancy is (often/usually) physically obvious to everyone around you, so why not talk about it. Sexual orientation (despite this thread’s general implication) usually isn’t. 
No, not at all (Amanda Bearse didn’t surprise me, FWIW). It seems Sarah Paulson and Amanda Peet are good friends, and there’s a lot of pictures of them together. I saw the pics when I searched for Sarah (including this, which I just scanned and in doing so missed three important letters - BFF), and mistakenly thought they were a couple.
Nope. Longer. You can tell because all gays wear those tight tight plastic pants!
The Pete Townsend discussion reminds me of that line from The opposite of Sex “Puh-lease! I went to a bar mitzvah once. That doesn’t make me Jewish.”
Bugs and Pepe (of course) would surprise me, but not Daffy, Sylvester, or that burly construction foreman/army sergeant guy. And the two chipmunks? Just a pair of confirmed bachelors sharing living expenses.
But seriously, I think it’s no coincidence that there was a time when:
- There were obviously gay character actors
- who were great character actors. Enhanced good movies, redeemed bad ones.
- whose personal lives were not for public consumption, since they were not the major stars
- and they were not good looking men
(examples: Paul Lynne, Franklin Pangborn, Victor Buono*, etc.)
Today everyone is out, which is fine, but they’re also required to be impossibly attractive. Acting skills or onscreen charisma? Eh - we’ll blue-screen that in.
We only allow pretty people on TV & movies. The only unglamorous character roles are for heterosexual slackers, farting and drining beer so the leading man has some guy friends for het cred.
*who had this great response:
“I’ve heard or read about actors being asked the immortal question ‘Why have you never married?’ They answer with the immortal excuse ‘I just haven’t found the right girl.’ Because I’m on the hefty side, no one’s asked me yet. If they do, that’s the answer I’ll give. After all, if it was good enough for Monty Clift or Sal Mineo…”
I’m also interested in if people are from Ohio.
Edgar J Hooverbeing maybe-sorta-kinda gay was kind of a surprise.
That “wide stance” Senator Larry Craig didn’t ping the gaydar in interviews he held.
Dumbledore being gay was a bit of a surprise.
Like others this is the first I’ve heard that Raymond Burr was gay, and it is surprising. Didn’t know that David Ogden Steirs was either.
Rob Halford surprised me. Kind of in a ‘its rather funny/ironic’ sort of way. Especially when I heard someone say how he started the whole heavy metal-black leather & spikes look, and in fact it was only because it was also a gay (and straight) fetish thing. Don’t know how true that really is though.
One that probably seems incredibly obvious but surprised me nonetheless was John Waters. Didn’t find out until he played a gay character (essentially himself) in that great Simpsons episode Homerphobia. I always thought of him as just a weirdo with a very dark sense of humor like Michael O’Donoghue, but not really gay at all.
Sadly, not me. In fact, an entry from my livejournal:
D’oh!
I was pretty surprised when I heard a few years ago that the gorgeous **Saffron Burrows **(whom I’ve had a crush on since seeing her in Circle of Friends) was in a relationship with Fiona Shaw (Aunt Petunia from the Harry Potter movies!).
It’s a little easier if you think of himin his earlier, film noir days.
No mention of Tab Hunter yet? I have to say he surprised me a little. As did Darren II, whatever his name was. And what about Mike Brady? I hadn’t actually seen that one coming either.
Caesar was probably functionally bisexual; there’s plenty of evidence attesting to his womanizing and manizing all over ancient Rome and its client-states. The liaison with King Nikomedes of Bithynia was only as scandalous as it was because Caesar was allegedly the ‘bottom’; this is why Dolabella called him “the queen’s rival” and why Bibulus mocked him as “the queen of Bithynia”. Caesar’s liaison with Nikomedes is reported by Suetonius, Cicero, Dolabella, Gaius Memmius, Brutus, etc. I recommend checking People With A Historywhich has extracts from the relevant texts on the subject.
Samantha Fox (the Page Three girl/recording star, not the porn star, who I don’t know about).
What’s more suprising, some times, are those who haven’t come out.
I saw Johnny Weir skate this week in Vancouver. In a black costume with pink borders and a pink tassel on the shoulder. Which, apparently, he designed himself.
:rolleyes: Dude, face it, you’re well into the Liberace Zone. There’s no door on the closet.
Yeah, and I can’t believe Liberace was gay. I mean, women loved him! I didn’t see that one coming.
On page 1 of this thread, I was more surprised to learn that Tab Hunter is still alive.
I don’t think there’s a closet involved in Weir’s case at all. I think his whole approach is “Duh! Do you really need me to say I’m gay? What are you, retarded?”
He’s so obviously out that to say so explicitly is completely unnecessary and stupid. I love his approach.
According to my NRA website, Craig is still butching it up, running for a board position with NRA (along with Ted Nugent and Karl Malone, among others).