James Randi comes out of the closet at 81

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/914-how-to-say-it.html

by MikeCapone • 16 years ago

77 38 16 years ago

mikecane4• 16 years ago

OK, this surprises me. Rock Hudson was shocking. So was George Takei. Right, so who else from my 1960s childhood will announce? Just end the damned suspense. Statute of limitations and all that. And it's a new age too.

mikecane4• 16 years ago

OK, I don't see why this got downvoted unless you misunderstood. If you grew up in the 1960s -- which I did -- there was no mention of homosexuality at all in the general culture and especially not to us kids. So it's naturally surprising to wind up in adulthood and to see who has been gay all along.

Anyone who thinks there is any hint of disapproval in this should go read two of my other posts elsewhere: http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2006/11/18/the-homo-fag-queer-... http://mikecane.wordpress.com/2006/11/17/that-funny-that-nas...

And for those who dismiss what Randi did -- it was important for him.

azakus• 16 years ago

Good for him. It's sad that he felt he had to wait this long.

fnid23• 16 years ago

I agree. I also find it interesting that someone hiding something so big about himself was so interested in exposing other people's secrets.

wisty• 16 years ago

Unless he claimed to be straight (and tried to rip people off with "going straight" seminars), it's not an issue. He wasn't exposing secrets. He was exposing deliberate deceptions which were used to manipulate other people into changing their behavior and beliefs.

He claims that miracle workers should put their claims up against a rigorous test. Fair enough. I wouldn't care if he was secretly (say) a Buddhist, as long as he didn't claim he (or anyone else) could work miracles. Faith in a higher power has a wonderful placebo effect - it's empirical. It doesn't mean you have to rationally accept it.

kschua• 16 years ago

This surprised the hell out of me and now his choice of work makes sense to me.

Born in that period and being promised hell after death for being gay must have triggered a whole lot rationalizing process in him which definitely helped made him a crusader against the paranormal and brought logic and exposed so many of the hoaxes.

If only Alan Turing didn't commit suicide.... sigh

greycolumbus• 16 years ago

This is incredibly surprising. Whatever the case, I wish the man the best of luck; this can't go over well what with all of the combative kooks out there.

tokenadult• 16 years ago

This is not at all surprising to me, as someone who has been subscribing to the magazine that includes his column for years. As he points out, the connection between his personal life and his work is primarily that he desires people to apply rationality to their decisions about how they view other people's choices in their personal lives. He belongs to a generation with such different experiences that he may have been habituated to staying "in the closet" long after when he needed to.

AndrewO• 16 years ago

I really debated whether or not to upvote this. I'm guessing that HN has a higher percentage of people who like (or at least know of) Randi than the general public, so it certainly fits the "general interest" guideline. But I'd also (like to) think that we're getting to a point (at least in this community) where this is so acceptable as to not warrant mention. I also worried that I'd be contributing to the "Look Who's Gay Now!" style of news that plagues conventional outlets (well, at least entertainment news).

That being said, I don't mean to take away from Randi's personal decision to come out and the hardships he had to endure for the last 70 years. This comment is my own little part of the "murmur of acceptance" he expected and I hope that he would appreciate me asking (as an honest question for the purpose of social insight), why did you, as an HN reader find this newsworthy?

jackowayed• 16 years ago

Even if HN might be past the point where anyone would care (I wouldn't count on the % being as good as you'd hope), society isn't, so it's still interesting that he's one more person coming out and helping the general public realize that homosexuality is common and that plenty of "great" people are gay.

noonespecial• 16 years ago

Set 1 (Accomplished magician, noted skeptic, great writer)

Set 2 (naturalized American citizen, had cancer once, likes cheese)

Place the following in the correct category: Gay. (Optional: be enlightened by choice.)

jgrahamc• 16 years ago

I had to "come out" as straight live on BBC Radio Manchester when I was running the Alan Turing apology campaign. The interviewer assumed I was gay and asked me a question about the gay community. Didn't have any clue and figured the best thing was to "admit" that I was straight.

During the campaign I received hate email suggesting that I was gay, the Prime Minister told me that I was "brave", and many, many people assume I'm gay because of Turing.

It's such a shame that people think that way, after all, it couldn't possibly be the case that a straight man thought that treating a gay man badly was the wrong thing to do.

Good on Randi for coming out. Now let's move on to other things that are more important.

alex_c• 16 years ago

That's funny - I simply assumed you were a geek. Whether or not you were gay didn't even cross my mind.

swombat2• 16 years ago

It is very brave to come out as a geek.

ErrantX• 16 years ago

I've seen this before; I've always felt really strongly about homophobia and will speak out about it when I see it happening - people often just assume that means I'm gay (as if it matters...).

> Good on Randi for coming out. Now let's move on to other things that are more important.

Couldn't agree more :)

RK• 16 years ago

Well, at least they didn't out you live on air as a "CS" person :)

camccann• 16 years ago

It's such a shame that people think that way, after all, it couldn't possibly be the case that a straight man thought that treating a gay man badly was the wrong thing to do.

Or even that someone might just think that a man who did great things for the world being treated so badly that he was driven to suicide was a gross injustice of staggering proportion no matter what stupid reason there was for the mistreatment. It's somewhat depressing that even today who Turing slept with is apparently more significant than anything else about him. Sigh.

stretchwithme2• 16 years ago

so many people follow the crowd that any time someone doesn't, the crowd assumes there's some ulterior motive.

I wish people would recognize that it is oppression that is wrong and not the latest form of oppression to be declared politically incorrect that is wrong. But that ideal is not how the human animal works unfortunately.

mahmud• 16 years ago

This is horribly shocking to me John. I didn't know you were British :-(

VMG• 16 years ago

Not only that - a Manc too.

swombat2• 16 years ago

Fatal error: Non-static method (null)::Q() cannot be called statically in /home/jamesran/public_html/site/libraries/joomla/utilities/simplexml.php on line 607

That's a pretty serious thing to admit in public. He uses Joomla. PHP. Damn. Another idol crumbles.

sabat• 16 years ago

Skeptics have debunked his claim.

gojomo• 16 years ago

Can they collect $1 million if they prove Randi is heterosexual?

eru3• 16 years ago

No.

najirama• 16 years ago

Who cares?

Does his sexuality erase or amplify the work he has done? No.

Let's move on.

mikecane4• 16 years ago

It's important for him to mention in that he is 81 years old and is probably contemplating a shorter future than any of us. It's a good thing for him to tell everyone rather than have it wind up in post-mortem articles that make it out to be some dark secret that could be used to cast his life's work in a bad light.

raganwald2• 16 years ago

I agree with your suggestion that he ought to have written this post. I also suggest that there are many types of blog posts that ought to be written. That doesn't mean they ought to be on the front page of Hacker News.

raganwald2• 16 years ago

I'm with you on this. Not only am I confused about the Hacker News component of this story, I'm confused about the "news" component of this story. If he was, say, a politician married to a woman who had voted against every law recognizing homosexuals as equal members of society, this would be news albeit not hacker news.

As it is, it simply isn't newsworthy. It might be titillating or perhaps surprising to people who bothered to hang the wrong label around his neck. That's about it.

whatusername• 16 years ago

On a related note - the Milk film that he references is fantastic. Possibly it was because I saw it knowing nothing about the story (I've got no idea about SF/gay politics) and so it was all new to me. Well worth watching.

_pius• 16 years ago

Strangely, this is the first article about or by Randi that I've seen on Hacker News. I'd never heard of him until now.

GrandMasterBirt• 16 years ago

To be honest when someone working on wall street commodities market floor can come out as gay, THEN I will accept that the culture finally accepted gays.

My friend has to pretend that he is straight and tell stories of him and his gf, because if found out that he was gay, not only would be lose most business, his life would be put through hell.

Congrats Randi!

eru3• 16 years ago

Professional footballers in Germany (soccer players for you Americans) also still have to be straight for social reasons.

Contrast that with a gay mayor in Berlin and a gay foreign minister.

James Randi comes out of the closet at 81

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