Television mother Meredith Baxter has
come out gay. The sixty-two-year-old actress said Wednesday on NBC's
Today show that she has been dating women for the past
seven years.
“I am a lesbian and it was a
later-in-life recognition,” she told Matt Lauer. “Some people
would say, well, you're living a lie and, you know, the truth is –
not at all. This has only been for the past seven years.”
The “Family Ties” mother became
tabloid fodder last month when the National Enquirer reported she was
spotted aboard an all-lesbian cruise.
Additional photos surfaced this week of
Baxter and her girlfriend on PerezHilton.com, the website penned by
the openly gay blogger Perez Hilton.
Baxter, who has been married three
times and is a mother of five, told People magazine that “the
thought of being gay never crossed my mind.”
“I got involved with someone I never
expected to get involved with and it was that kind of awakening,”
she said. “I never fought it because it was like, oh, I understand
why I had the issues I had early in life. I had a great deal of
difficulty connecting with men in relationships.”
Baxter was also interviewed on Sirius
XM Radio's The Frank DeCaro Show, where she told her host that
perhaps she took the cruise because she was ready to publicly admit
her four-year relationship with her partner, Nancy Locke.
Baxter called her coming out a
political statement, saying on Today, “This is a political
act … If anyone knows someone who's gay or lesbian … they're less
likely to vote against them to take away their rights. I can be that
lesbian you know now ...”