After years of speculation about his sexuality, renowned television anchor, Anderson Cooper officially came out to the world in 2012, when he was 45 years old. After realizing his silence was doing more harm than good for the LGBT community, he decided to make his announcement in an email to writer Andrew Sullivan.
Today, Cooper was a guest on a segment of CNN Full Circle, where a viewer asked him how he learned to accept being gay.
In his answer, Cooper explains that although he didn’t know exactly what the term “gay” was, he knew something was “different” very early on, around age 6 or 7.
Cooper admits that he’d told his family and friends about his sexuality in his teenage years; but goes on to say that he finally accepted and learned to love being gay right after college. He had decided that he no longer wanted to waste time being something he wasn’t and living a lie.
“I think being gay is one of the great blessings of my life. It made me a better person, and it’s made me a better reporter.”
“When you feel, especially when you grow up, kind of feeling like you’re on the outside of things and you’re kind of an observer to things or not necessarily in the mainstream, you see society from a slightly different view, and I think that can be very valuable and can impact how you treat other people and how you see things,” he said.
Gayes, at what age did you realize you were gay?