Former NSync member Lance Bass claims
that bloggers, including Perez Hilton, bullied him into coming out
gay.
The recently married Bass discussed his
2006 coming out in Attitude's Love & Marriage special
commemorative issue.
Bass came out in a People magazine
cover story.
“Two years before I came out I was
really bullied on the Internet by bloggers, that’s when Perez
Hilton just started and was just really malicious against me,” Bass
explained. “So, because of the bloggers like him hounding me,
all the other magazines started calling me and saying, 'Look, we know
you’re gay, you can write the story with or without us, but we have
to write it.' I decided to go with People and I think they did a
great job. I had 24 hours to decide if I was going to come out or
not, and within 24 hours it was on the stands.”
“I had a lot of pressures on me at
that point. Not only was I keeping the secret from my family, but I
also had this career with four of my best friends. I knew, in the
late 1990s/early 2000s, that if I came out, people would hate *NSYNC,
and that would be the end of our career. There was no way I was
going to do that to my four best friends, so, as long as I was with
them, I was asexual. I wasn't with a girl, I wasn't with a guy, I
just focused on work, and it kept me out of trouble.”
“It wasn’t until I realized there
wasn’t going to be another *NSYNC album that I felt ready! I
wasn't even that sad about the end of *NSYNC as I felt that I'd
actually get to be myself from then on. That's when I started
finding myself and started dating guys – it was great,” he added.
(Related: Lance
Bass initially said “no” to E! wedding special.)