Country music singer Chely Wright has
said love bloomed after she left the closet.
The 41-year-old Wright came out gay in
her 2010 memoir Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country
Singer, becoming the first openly gay country music star.
In an interview with The
Washington Post, Wright says finding love as a closeted
lesbian wasn't possible for her.
“If you try to find your life's mate
in a dark, small closet, you tend to find a lot of unhealthy people,”
Wright said. “And that was the experience I was having in the
closet. It wasn't until I came out that I was able to find a
healthy, happy relationship.
Wright married her wife Lauren Blitzer
in a ceremony in Connecticut last summer.
The Single White Female singer's
LIKEME non-profit will open its first LIKE Lighthouse LGBT center in
Kansas City, Missouri on Friday, March 9.
The center includes an LGBT library, a
meeting space and conference rooms. Services such as suicide
prevention and STD testing will be offered.
“This just gives so much hope to
these outlying areas, that your major metropolitan area has a gay and
lesbian center,” Wright said. “That would have meant everything
to me had I been a kid growing up in Wellsville, knowing that there
is a beautiful facility in our major city, that that was OK.”
During a Thursday appearance on MSNBC,
Wright told host Thomas Roberts that the center's opening
celebration would run through Sunday. (The video is embedded in the
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