"The fact is, I'm gay," Cooper wrote in an email to Daily Beast blogger Andrew Sullivan. "Always have been, always will be, and I couldn't be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud."
Sullivan, who is gay and is a
longtime friend of Cooper's, had asked the CNN anchor for his reaction
to a recent Entertainment Weekly story—"The New Art of Coming Out"—which
was, in part, about the importance of gay celebrities coming out of the
closet to combat America's bullying epidemic.
"Andrew, as you know, the issue you raise is one that I've thought about
for years," Cooper responded. "Even though my job puts me in the public
eye, I have tried to maintain some level of privacy in my life. Part of
that has been for purely personal reasons. I think most people want
some privacy for themselves and the people they are close to."
"But I've also wanted to retain
some privacy for professional reasons," Cooper continued. "Since I
started as a reporter in war zones 20 years ago, I've often found myself
in some very dangerous places. For my safety and the safety of those I
work with, I try to blend in as much as possible, and prefer to stick to
my job of telling other people's stories, and not my own. I have found
that sometimes the less an interview subject knows about me, the better I
can safely and effectively do my job as a journalist. I've always
believed that who a reporter votes for, what religion they are, who they
love, should not be something they have to discuss publicly."
Cooper said he did not come out in his 2006 memoir, "Dispatches from the Edge," because the book was meant to be about war and not about his personal life.
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