Now that she’s a full-fledged public lez, Family Ties mom Meredith Baxter is doling out the press interviews. It’s like she had a carefully orchestrated coming out plan in place. (Uh, yeah!) After a Today show stop, she’ll be on OutQ’s The Frank DeCaro Show today, with a layover on Advocate.com. And it’s there that she took a giant crap on a certain lesbian funny lady’s own coming out story. After living so long outside the public spotlight, Baxter might need a lesson in celebrity etiquette.
Namely, don’t shit on your fellow fags.
Baxter, 62, hasn’t exactly been hiding her sexuality, but she wasn’t trumpeting it either. But thanks to the National Enquirer and the gossip blogs, she’s been forced into public lesbianhood. Not that hopping aboard a lesbian cruise — with girlfriend of two years, Nancy Locke — did much to shield the attention. “I knew that this was probably going to come at one point, and obviously I wasn’t fighting too hard,” she says.
So why come out now? Theoretically, she could have stayed silent, despite the impossible-to-deny reports. She’s still a working actress (recent credits: Brothers, Family Guy), but not nearly as high-profile as she once was. But it was as good a time as any, she says. “To be honest, it was time.”
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Fine. But given that she’s acknowledging people that “[know] someone who’s gay or lesbian … [are] less likely to vote against them to take away their rights,” why not come out when it could have influenced a vote? Like, say, before Prop 8?
“That,” she insists, “would have seemed opportunistic. I didn’t see the point in that.”
Interesting, because a fellow “not secretly gay, but not publicly out” lesbian actress feels entirely different.
Wanda Sykes used Prop 8 as her motivation to come out publicly. To be sure, it was after Prop 8 passed that Sykes made the big reveal. At a Las Vegas anti-Prop 8 rally, Sykes acknowledged what many in Hollywood knew for years — and specifically noted that Prop 8 was her reason to come out publicly, because the vote to eliminate same-sex marriage was an attack on her rights.
As a fellow California resident, well, Baxter didn’t make the same choice. And she has her reasons. Mostly, because she thought nobody needed her to come out: “It was certainly just heartbreaking to see that go down — I didn’t expect that at all. I really thought we were going to be OK.”
Well, we weren’t.
We aren’t harping on Baxter for not coming out before. Far from it! But with so few lesbian actress coming out stories to choose from, it might be wise to speak softly before criticizing how other famous gals choose to come out.
(Photo: Marc Royce)
Landon Bryce
Queerty:
Learn the lesson you preach to Meredith:
“Namely, don’t shit on your fellow fags.”
Chisne
Really? Not harping on Meredith Baxter? Because it sure feels like it, and to make it seem as if she said Wanda Sykes was opportunistic was not nice. All she expressed was an opinion, and how was she supposed to know what motivated Wanda Sykes?
Why can’t we be happy for her, instead of blasting her for having a mind of her own? Do you really think she would have changed the outcome? I don’t think so.
Argh!
Queerty,
You folks are pathetic. Baxter said nothing about Sykes.
You have no journalistic integrity.
FAIL!
Matthew Rettenmund
Come on, Queerty, she wasn’t referring to and didn’t explicitly mention Wanda Sykes, and she even said in her very honest reply that she might be wrong for having felt that way. I didn’t read it as a criticism of Sykes at all.
1EqualityUSA
I don’t care when a person decides to come out. Whatever feels right to that individual is right. If you’re a anti-gay politician playing footsies in a bathroom stall, outing is understandable. By the title of this article, it seemed as though M.B. specified Wanda Sykes, that didn’t ring true. This is a high pressure time for M.B., so the less unpleasantries cast her way, the better. People need to feel safe about coming out, not shaking their heads in awe at how badly gays were treated when they came out.
edgyguy1426
…and all these years I was hoping for David Birney to come out….
RobinNYC
Wait…
So…You’re claiming Meredith Baxter has shit on the way Wanda Sykes came out even though a) Ms. Baxter said nothing about Ms. Sykes and b) Ms. Sykes actually didn’t come out the way Ms. Baxter was commenting on.
So…you simply made up this story. Or your reading comprehension is dreadful.
1-800-ABC-DEFG.
Jesse @ Gay Vantage
Wanda’s coming out was perfect. Wanda also had positive peer pressure because she went to a gay marriage rally and felt like a hypocrite publicly supporting it but people not know that she, too, was gay.
Even if it was opportunistic, it was perfectly orchestrated because we needed someone high profile like her (she did go on to MC the WH press correspondents dinner afterwards) coming out at that time.
Both Ellen and Wanda are proving that gay people can still work in Hollywood. Ellen has one of the highest rated daytime (probably right after Oprah, me thinks) talk shows and Wanda just got her late-night show on Fox.
Ugh, this Meredith Baxter thing seemed promising but it sounds like she already needs to stick her foot in her mouth and she’s had less than a handful of interviews on the matter.
Cam
Oh give me a break, it’s the same tired old excuses. “I didn’t come out because gee, who would really care, and what good would it do?. Gee, Meredith, perhaps all the older people who voted against us would have seen in you somebody that they had grown up with and loved as an actress and maybe thought twice about coming out and voting against us.
Good for her that she’s out, but by saying it would be “Opportunistic” for her to have come out during the Prop 8 debate is idiotic and insulting. Just say you weren’t ready yet, and that would have been fine.
John
You suck, Queerty.
josh.josh.josh
I think Baxter would have been seen as opportunistic if she had come out after Prop 8 à la Sykes. Sykes’s popularity was on the rise, while Baxter has been out of the public eye for a while. Sykes risked a lot; Baxter would have gotten PR she hasn’t seen in years (assuming she wanted attention, which doesn’t seem to be the case).
And Queerty, that headline makes kittens sad. 🙁
mm
@ aarg
Right, I guess she was talking about you? Queerty is not the economist or the indypendent. It’s a gay news and opinion BLOG. The gay news here is that Meredith came out. From that a multitude of opinions spring forth regarding its context in today’s world. I like Queerty because it provides commentary not heard anywhere else. Provocation, I dunno, some people like it, some people don’t. It keeps the mind’s engine ablaze. Questioning things. Saying FAIL too many times turns people in douches, though.
Attmay
@9 Cam:
When Dick Sargent (Darren #2 on “Bewitched”) came out, whose mind was changed? Most people like Dick York better anyway.
When it was revealed post-mortem that Robert Reed, patriarch of the Brady Bunch, was a closet queen, whose mind was changed?
Bigots aren’t bigots because of actors sitcoms. They’re bigots because they’re taught to hate.
Back to the main issue, this article is like that other Michael J. Fox sitcom, “Spin City.” Does Queerty have a post-per-day quota they need to fill at all costs?
js
Hey Queerty, Wanda Sykes is an ass, but why don’t you instead encourage some queens to come out of the closet instead of picking a ‘non’ argument ‘fight’ with the only lesbian celebs who are out? These are not even real issues. It’s a fake post manufactured out of thin air. Aimed at out lesbians.
Nice head.
Perhaps you should talk about how misogynist white gay men are once in a while? And maybe what perverts people like Barwny Fwank are? Oh no… I forgot, you love him as you posted on Thanksgiving. You are thankful for Bawney Frank a rank pedophile.
E.Alan
@ Queerty,
Wait a minute! Baxter didn’t say anything about Wanda Sykes.Her name never came up in the conversation. Your headline is completely misleading and irresponsible. I thought yellow journalism was a thing of the past.
Jeez, I keep expecting to get news from you and instead all i get is malicious and catty gossip. Pathetic…
gomez
jeezus christ, queerty. your sensationalism is fucking unreal. what the fuck?
Fitz
You know that awful, negative, unattractive, slightly drunk queen from college? The one who, (behind backs of course), dished on everyone– then felt betrayed when they weren’t included in party plans? Well, that queen grew up and started Queerty.
mk
The gay press and gay blogs (including Queerty) criticize and nitpick gays more than almost anyone. They also manufacture feuds sometimes like this.
Baxter was talking about herself in response to a question, there’s no reason to suppose she was thinking of Sykes. Baxter’s career has been efectively dead for a long time, so it’s understandable how she might think in her situation popping up out of nowhere during a political controversy and calling up the press to announce she’s gay would seem like an opportunistic grab for attention. Sykes still had an active career so it wouldn’t look desperate and she’d recently gotten married and was having kids so it was obvious to everyone why marriage would be particularly relevant to her and why it was natural for her to come out at the time for non-famewhore reasons.
Not Buyig It
It’s an obvious attempt to restart a failed career.
MauraHennessey
Baxter said nothing about Sykes. Further, the scenario that she described bore little resemblance to how Sykes came out. If you want to beat up on a Lesbian, please do so with some accuracy.
She has been living as a Lesbian for about seven years, and probably considered it more in the sense of simply being in love with someone rather than a grand political statement.