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Anderson Cooper was 45 when he came out publicly in 2012, but this week a CNN viewer wanted to know how old the reporter was when he realized he was gay and accepted it for him. -even.
In his response, Cooper explained that these are two very different things that happened at very different ages.
“I was probably … I don’t know … 7, when I realized a little bit,” he explained on Monday’s episode of “Full Circle.” “I’m not sure I knew the word ‘gay’ at the time, but I realized that something was going on, that something was different. It was probably, yes, 6 or 7. ”
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As he got older, he understood better what that meant and even opened up to high school friends about his sexual orientation. But eventually, he said he had “struggled” with him as a teenager.
Cooper discovered that there were things he just couldn’t do, like joining the military at a time when homosexuality was seen as grounds for release or traveling abroad to areas where it remained illegal and often dangerous to be gay. And that was not all.
“It wasn’t what I envisioned for my life,” he said. “I imagined a family and getting married and all that stuff, which was not possible back then.”
But he began to refocus his vision for the future after attending Yale University.
“I think I really, really accepted it – and just sort of, really not just accepted it, but I fully embraced it and came to really like the fact that I was gay – would probably be right after college, ”the now-53- said one year, adding that it was“ about a year after college (when) I realized, ‘I don’t want to waste time worrying anymore. about it ‘and somehow to wish another way.
And that personal feeling of acceptance changed everything for him.
“I think being gay is one of the great blessings in my life,” he continued. “And that made me a better person; it made me a better journalist. When you grow up feeling like you’re on the outside of things, you’re kind of an observer or not necessarily in it. mainstream, you see society from a slightly different perspective. And I think it can be very helpful and impact the way you treat others and how you view things. It has allowed me to ‘to love the people that I have loved and to have the life that I have had. So I am very blessed. “
As society began to catch up with this sense of acceptance, a lot of things he once considered impossible have come true in his life – like starting a family of his own.
In April of last year, he welcomed his son, Wyatt, into the world through a surrogate mother.
“When I was 12 and knew I was gay and was thinking about my life, it always upset me because I thought, ‘I’ll never be able to have children,'” Cooper said. to People magazine shortly after Wyatt was born. “It’s a dream come true.”
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