I came across a link while reading USA Today online. It was a link to an article entitled “25 Celebrities We Knew Were Gay.” The article was a bit too snarky for my taste, having captions such as “if you looked at any of his photos you would know” when describing Magic Johnson’s son. While it would initially appear the article was taking advantage of the recent disclosures of Michael Sam and Ellen Page being homosexual, the article was produced in mid 2013.

I think it’s a prerequisite that every year or two an online article comes out about celebrities who proclaim their homosexuality but didn’t need to since ‘the public’ already knew their sexuality. Anderson Cooper was someone on the list I read and I remember at the time how some pointed to his on air antics with Kathy Griffin, who could be considered a homosexual friendly comic, as proof he was gay. With a number of celebrities, as the article seemed to humorously imply, the company that they kept was proof of homosexual leanings. For years it has been rumored that Queen Latifah is lesbian. It could have started from her role in Set It Off, where she played a lesbian. Years later there have been photos that surfaced that suggest she is lesbian. Of course, there is her support of LGTB issues and her attendance at a number of gay pride over the years. The officiating at the Grammy Awards of a mass wedding ceremony that included homosexual couples sparked the rumors again.

Side note: As I went on Google to make sure I had her name spelled correctly, I saw a news article dated less than a day ago with the title “Gay Iconography: Could Queen Latifah Be A Closeted Icon?”

What I find so remarkable about so many questions about who is and isn’t gay are the amount of people who claim they don’t care about a person’s sexuality, yet will have opinions about it. I have found that when people claim disinterest in someone who comes out as gay, they have quite a bit of information about that person. Obviously the less generally known the person is the less of the ‘I knew it’ comment comes out. Michael Sam is a relatively new ‘celebrity’ on the scene, so less of the general public had the ‘I knew it’ moment, but in watching some news interviews there were sports reporters who claimed to have known about Sams’ homosexuality but didn’t feel it was relative enough to print, which makes sense.

I heard more people talk about how they knew Ellen Page was lesbian. The ironic thing about this revelation is that it falls into the ‘mad heterosexual guy’ slot. This is where a good looking woman reveals she is a lesbian and some straight men, who liked the woman in the past, kind of feel a little sore about the revelation at first. At some point, the male brain (the other one) kicks in and there is some lingering hope she can be ‘changed’ or at least ‘switch-hit.’

Look, we have a natural American curiosity to pry into the personal lives of celebrities. Go into any supermarket and you will see rows of magazines blasting the details of some celebrity. It could be for voyeuristic pleasure, a need to feel our simple lives are better than the rich and famous, simple envy or a bunch of other reasons. I don’t think we need to devolve into a Maury Povicth guest, turning ourselves into a street geneticist pointing out how we knew someone was homosexual way before ‘the world’ knew.