Coming Out Stories: December 2006 Archives

An event over the weekend raising money for The Trevor Project, which operates a suicide prevention hotline for gay youth, drew recently out actors Neil Patrick Harris and T.R. Knight. Both actors breezed past press on the red carpet with Harris explaining to USA Today that his "highly paid PR firm" had advised him to "lay low for awhile." But Harris did show up with boyfriend, actor David Burtka but they did not pose for photos together unlike Lance and Reichen no doubt during their limelight-loving relationship.

At the cocktail party after, Knight explained that "Life was good before [coming out] and life is good after."
But their decision to lie low at the event did not sit well with the transgendered Alexis Arquette (pictured below with sisters Rosanna and Patricia earlier this year) who was outraged by the refusal to give interviews and that neither actor acknowledged their comings out during their remarks on stage: "People like that are weak; it's pathetic." Arquette then wished for a world "where people didn't have that fear."
I think Arquette, out as a gay actor ("Grief," "I Think I Do for Now") long before he began to publicly transition to becoming a woman, is being too harsh on these two actors who actually have handled their coming out in a very classy way and by being there at the Trevor Project event, they aren't hiding.
His sister, Patricia Arquette, was more understanding: "It's never easy to come out. It's a very brave thing. I was terrified for Alexis, with all the cruelty in the world, that he would be taunted, teased or beaten."