In case you missed it yesterday, Billy Gilman came out yesterday in a YouTube video. If you haven't seen it yet, I encourage you to go view it and hear what he has to say. In its own way, the video is absolutely heartbreaking because of some of what he has to say about why he took a while to come out. And given some of the comments I have seen on websites which have run this news, I cannot say I am surprised at his fear.
In his video, he says that part of the reason he didn't come out was because he felt that country music was a hard genre to be an openly gay artist in and because country music would be ashamed of him. Apparently there were some rumours about his sexuality and when he had some new music to release, no major labels would come to him, despite the fact that he had 2 albums certified gold by the time he was 13 and sold over 5 million albums. While this may not have all been because of the rumours, it is hard not to think that they played a major part in what happened. He also said that he had a showcase and no major albums showed up. As I said just above, this may be due to other reasons, but given how people are about rumours in general, it is hard to imagine that they had nothing to do with the labels not showing up.
While society has come a long way in the past few years where it comes to accepting people who are LGBT, there is still a lot of work to be done. Why should anyone have to hide who they are from the world because they are afraid of how people will react? People who say that people should not have to come out are right, only thing is most of them are right for the wrong reasons. A lot of them say that people shouldn't be sharing who they are sleeping with or something like that. As I said in an earlier post, that is not what coming out is about. Coming out is about telling the world who you are and being honest. I look forward to the day when people don't need to come out, but will be accepted as who they are. Sadly, we are not there yet, so it is important to hear the stories of people like Billy Gilman or anyone else who comes out in order to become more aware of the issues surrounding people who come out.
How do I know we're not there yet? Just look at some of the comments on pages with news about Billy's coming out. One commenter called him a "snaggle toothed mongoloid" and another set up a dueling set of dialogues about Billy Gilman's team and Ty Herndon's team both rushing to come out first. It may not sound bad, but when you read it, you will see it is written in a highly derogatory tone. And those were the nicest of the bad comments. It's just sad and pathetic that people still have this sort of reaction to someone coming out and telling the world who they actually are.
It takes a lot of courage for anyone to come out, but it takes a lot more to come out as a celebrity- particularly one in country music which tends to have a particularly reactionary fan base. I do want to emphasize that I am not saying all country music fans are homophobic twats, but as a whole, the fanbase and genre are not the most progressive. Doubt it, read this article with some of country singer Kenny Chesney's thoughts on how country music views women. And yes, I am well aware to other musical genres objectify women as well, but that is a topic for another post.
Mr. Gilman, congratulations on coming out and I hope that you and your partner have a long and happy life together. I have been a fan since your first album and will continue to remain one.
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