CNN's Don Lemon Says He's Gay in New Memoir
Don Lemon, a weekend anchor on CNN Newsroom, has a highly personal memoir coming out next month. It's called Transparent, and it will reveal, among other things, that Lemon is gay and suffered sexual abuse as a child. Lemon hasn't kept his sexuality a secret; his colleagues at CNN have long known that he's gay. But as he recently told The New York Times, he thinks the news will surprise a lot of people--and he's aware that "going public in his book carries certain risks."
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"I'm scared," Lemon told the Times. "I'm talking about something that people might shun me for, ostracize me for."
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Maybe. But so far, at least, people seem to be rallying around Lemon. The Times notes that "he has been assured of support by CNN"--the network has already booked him as a guest on Monday's edition of CNN Newsroom, and he'll be on The Joy Behar Show on sister network HLN this week.
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Meanwhile, Mark Pasetsky at Forbes observed last night that Lemon was a trending topic on Twitter. As of this morning, it looks like people are mostly tweeting in support of him, with a smattering of women expressing dismay that Lemon is out of their dating pool. (Lemon is a pretty handsome dude.)
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Daniel Villarreal at Queerty speculates that for Lemon, things can only get better from here: "Lemon could easily position himself as an effective LGBT advocate both behind and away from the news desk."
