By John Mack Freeman
In an essay in this morning’s Businessweek, Apple CEO Tim Cook came out as gay. Admitting that he had long been out in his personal life and to colleagues at Apple, Cook came out to the public at large saying in part: “I don’t consider myself an activist, but I realize how much I’ve benefited from the sacrifice of others. So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.”
Cook’s sexuality has long been an open secret in much of the LGBT media. Earlier this year during a discussion of John Browne’s The Glass Closet on CNBC, one of the panelists Simon Hobb commented that Cook was fairly open about his sexuality at a time when he in fact wasn’t. Additionally, Cook was named the most powerful LGBT person on Out‘s 2013 Power List.