Ian Thorpe Is Gay. And…?

We were treated today to the revelation that Ian Thorpe is gay. I bet they’re seriously peeved at Channel 10 that, after leaving us hanging on the edges of our seats all week, it’s now been reported all over the world – well ahead of tonight’s ‘drop the bombshell’ interview with Parkinson.

You have to wonder though – does the media reporting this as such a ‘shocking’ and ‘tell all’ interview, plus the huge press it’s got over the past 24 hours or so actually do damage to the whole idea that there’s nothing special about being gay? In fact, Martina Navratilova ‘came out’ in 1981 – that’s 33 years ago. It was big news back then because it was something fairly new and, at that time, considered somewhat ‘shocking’ to the mainstream.

The fact that the media are still using the term ‘came out’ in this day and age suggests that they’re about twenty or thirty years behind the rest of us. Here’s a news flash – we don’t really care any more. Well, maybe the young ladies who were hoping to become Mrs Thorpe one day might but I’m sure they’ll get over it. It might have raised eyebrows in the 70’s and prior to that, but it’s the 2010’s now and we figured out ages ago that being gay wasn’t caused by demonic possession or some sort of mental illness didn’t we?

Call me a cynic, but I reckon the real driving force behind this ‘revelation’ relates more to television ratings and newspaper circulation than anything we people in the real world care about.