Jake Shears, best known as the lead male singer for the band
Scissor Sisters, says he's glad he came out gay as a teen.
The 34-year-old Shears reportedly came out to his parents at the
age of 15 at the urging of sex advice columnist Dan Savage, who later
called
his advice “the worst and perhaps most damaging advice I ever
gave.”
“I'm really glad that I came out when I did because I feel like
by the time I reached my twenties I was like raring to go. I didn't
feel like I had a lot of baggage,” Shears told cabler Logo.
Shears has previously described his coming out as traumatic.
“I can't really say I totally regretted it but it was something
I probably shouldn't have done at the time. The reaction was pretty
bad and I had very few allies. It really made the rest of the year
pretty miserable for me. There was a lot of untethered bullying
happening, going totally unchecked by teachers and other staff who
watched it happen first hand. When kids ask me for advice about
coming out, I always ask them to really examine their surroundings
first,” he
said last year.
Shears expanded in the Logo interview: “I don't know how I did
it. It was really, really, really stressful and horrible.” (The
video is embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
(Related: Scissor
Sisters' Jake Shears proud to be a role model to gay teens.)