Actor Charlie Carver on Monday came out
gay.
The 27-year-old Carver, who is best
know for his roles as Ethan on MTV's Teen Wolf and Porter
Scavo on ABC's Desperate Housewives, made his announcement in
a series of Instagram posts.
Over five posts which included the same
graphic that read, “Be who you needed when you were younger,”
Carver said that he first realized he was gay at 12.
“As a young boy, I knew I wanted to
be an actor. I knew I wanted to be a lot of things! I thought I
wanted to be a painter, a soccer player, a stegosaurus.… But the
acting thing stuck. It was around that age that I also knew, however
abstractly, that I was different from some of the other boys in my
grade,” Carver wrote. “Over time, this abstract 'knowing' grew
and articulated itself through a painful gestation marked by feelings
of despair and alienation, ending in a climax of saying three words
out loud: 'I am gay.' I said them to myself at first, to see how they
felt. They rang true, and I hated myself for them. I was twelve. It
would take me a few years before I could repeat them to anyone else,
in the meantime turning the phrase over and over in my mouth until I
felt comfortable and sure enough to let the words pour out again,
this time to my family…”
Carver said that he grew up in a family
where his “orientation was celebrated and SAFE.”
Fame, he said, “complicated”
things.
“When it came to this differentiation
of public/private, I was of the opinion that my sexuality could stay
off the table … I did not want to be defined by my sexuality.
Sure, I am a proud gay man, but I don't identify as a Gay man, or a
GAY man, or just gay.”
“I now believe that by omitting this
part of myself from the record, I am complicit in perpetuating the
suffering, fear, and shame cast upon so many in the world. In my
silence, I've helped decide for you too that to be gay is be, as a
young man (or young woman, young anyone), inappropriate for a
professional career in the Arts.”
“So now, let the record show this –
I self-identify as gay. And does that really matter anymore?” he
added.
Carver's twin brother Max tweeted: “my
brother has HUEVOS.”