Clay Aiken comes out
Clay Aiken, of American Idol, has finally come out. It can't say it was much of a surprise.
Following the Aug. 8 birth of his son Parker, singer Clay Aiken is following through on a promise he made to himself as a new dad: to publicly acknowledge that he's gay."It was the first decision I made as a father," Aiken, 29, tells the upcoming issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday. "I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn't raised that way, and I'm not going to raise a child to do that."
He's also not the first male singer lately to have a child with a non-romantic partner, although unlike Ricky Martin, Clay says he will be co-parenting with the birth mother.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Clay Aiken comes out.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.feministing.com/cgi-bin/movabletype/mt-tb.fcgi/9489
Weekly Feministing Newsletter
Feministing RSS Feed
The press release from Aiken's camp following the birth of his son was obnoxious! Aiken proudly claimed that his son had ONE last name, not two. Yeah, god forbid Mama have any claim on the kid in the form of a last name.
It just proves that even in new and non-traditional types of families, men do so love to cling to one last tradition - patriarchy. Egh!
well, there are rumors Ricky Martin is gay too and he didn't have a romantic relationship with the mother of his baby. She was a surrogate, you know that, right?
anyway good for Clay, now he doesm't have to be ashamed anymore.
Here's a story for the "No, Duh" section of the paper.
I mean, good that he finally came out. I just wish it didn't have to be such a big deal.
Can we please not call her the birth mother? She is the mother, full stop.
h20_girl, I think the point of "birth mother" there was because Miriam was drawing a distinction between the co-parenting mother of the child Aiken fathered and the birth mother (i.e. the woman who bore but is not parenting the child) of Ricky Martin's kid. They are both biological moms, but only one is parenting. I don't think any offense was meant.
Unless of course you object to the utterly useful phrase "birth mother" in any usage, in which case, feel free to disregard my comment.
Danyell: Agreed. As I wrote on my own post about this, I really look forward to a day when someone's sexual orientation will be respected so much that it is completely left alone. I have to hope that eventually it will be a non-issue, that people won't even understand why we ever cared about who someone wants to be with.
An interesting road to an interesting family arrangement. I hope it works out.