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Comment by jiggy2011 | Hacker News Reader

jiggy2011

Tim Cook has as much right to a private life as anyone else, I think that his sexuality being too boring a topic to be worth commenting on is probably a good indicator.

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edit: HN won't let me post any comments. I'm sick of being rate limited every time I get into an interesting and worthwhile conversation. This story has already been flagged off the front page (was #3). This is ridiculous. E-mail me or PM me on Reddit if you want to know why most of the replies here miss the point.

How everyone in Silicon Valley reacted to this tells me you still have a long way to go before you can justifiably call it an accepting environment.

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You wouldn't realize this, but it's very helpful to people who are closeted or questioning to have real-life examples of gay people they can relate to. I live in a very sports-centric region. I didn't feel safe until Michael Sam came out and I could see that friends and family reacted positively. People around here just plain didn't discuss it before, so people like me had to take a big risk to live an authentic life in the open.

Straight people don't realize how much they reference their sexuality. You probably do it all the time in ways that are subtle and invisible to you. It doesn't make you a bad person. It just means you don't realize how goofy this sounds:

> I think that his sexuality being too boring a topic to be worth commenting on is probably a good indicator.

It's not really beholden on Cook to make statements about his personal life (or for the press to do so) because others may identify with him. In sports there exists more of a stigma around sexuality with less out players so it's much more newsworthy. Hopefully in 10 years nobody will find gay sports stars interesting either (at least not for that reason alone).

If we need a computer science-y role model who happens to be gay, we got Alan Turing. Why get out the second team when the MVP is on the field?

This isn't a good argument, just because there's a lack of role models (assuming this is even the case) doesn't mean you should push an unwilling part to become one. It looks to me as if this man is being blamed for not "coming out" as if that's a requisite for every homosexual. Being the face of a public company doesn't absolutely mean that discussing, or should I say speculating, on his private life is fair game. He, like everyone else, has the right to protect his privacy and disclose or keep secret as little or as much as he wants.

Exactly. So many young people are terrified that if they come out that their whole life is going to be about being gay. Everybody will interact with you through the lense of the dominating fact that you are gay.

The message people get is that it's okay to be gay as long as you act reasonably straight or are funny enough to be on TV. Same message being sent to blacks. No problem as long as you act normal aka white.

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