{"id":290914,"date":"2026-05-13T08:05:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T08:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/290914\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T08:05:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T08:05:21","slug":"that-time-whitney-houston-told-out-she-was-straight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/290914\/","title":{"rendered":"That time Whitney Houston told Out she was straight"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is an excerpt from Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000<\/a>, a book from former Out contributor Barry Walters, who interviewed Whitney Houston for a 2000 cover story<\/a> \u2014 the first and last time the late icon spoke with the LGBTQ<\/a>+ press. But first, an author’s note: <\/p>\n

“I ain\u2019t suckin\u2019 no dick,\u201d Whitney Houston blurted at me during our 2000 Out cover story, her first and last major interview with the LGBTQ+ press. That was her way of explaining why some believed our beloved diva was lesbian. But for our adversaries, the mere hint of gayness was insulting \u2013 a means to demonize an otherwise bulletproof Black superstar.<\/p>\n

My book Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000<\/a>, which Viking publishes May 12,<\/a> isn\u2019t about who is and who isn\u2019t queer in the music world. Instead, it focuses on the art our heroes made in the late 20th century, and the culture listeners create through communal interpretation. It deals with how musicians speak in codes to get past the gatekeepers, appease the mainstream, and reveal deeper truths to us.<\/p>\n

From Metallica to Madonna, I\u2019ve interviewed all sorts of talent: straight, lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer-adjacent, out-of-the-closet, and deeply within it. Whitney was the latter. The extent to which she and those around her lied to guard this secret proved lethal.<\/p>\n

Yet nearly every closeted LGBTQ+ artist I\u2019ve spoken to over the last 40-plus years has made some kind of reveal in which they come clean by letting me know privately what they\u2019re not yet able to make public. Melissa Etheridge, for example, confided in 1992 that she sensed what I wanted to ask, that she wasn\u2019t quite ready to answer it, and that she\u2019d get back to me when she could. (She did \u2013 the very next year!)<\/p>\n

Whitney didn\u2019t hold on long enough to do that with her words. Instead, she did it through her actions.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to give away here what happened immediately after I turned off my recorder: You\u2019ll need to read Mighty Real to learn that.<\/p>\n

The following excerpt of our infamous interview zeroes in on Whitney\u2019s duplicity as well as her pain. \u2013Barry Walters<\/p>\n

______<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Who is this African American kid coming in here and singing pop music like Barbra Streisand?\u2019\u201d Whitney lampooned. \u201c\u2018We have to inspect this girl. We have to pick her apart!\u2019 Barbra had her day too, you know, as an American Jew. So did Diahann Carroll, Lena Horne. They had real tough issues to deal with\u2014grinning onstage with the white people and then coming home and having to deal with civil rights issues. They picked me apart \u2019cause I surpassed the so-called rules. I beat the Beatles and the Elvises.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black superstars at that time rarely discussed racism with white journalists so forthrightly. Whitney regarded me as James Baldwin might have, as one queer person does with another. She knew I knew about discrimination firsthand. But what I didn\u2019t understand then was that she couldn\u2019t be honest with me about her sexual difference and thus spoke of her racial difference so I could still feel her struggle. Almost certainly, she sensed what I was about to ask, and that she\u2019d need to lie, and, therefore, she wanted me to sit with her in the analogously harrowing truth she could discuss. Maybe this was subterfuge, but maybe that\u2019s what all minorities and women must do. We\u2019re all forced to translate our pain into something else because the world isn\u2019t ready for it straight-up.<\/p>\n

Whatever was going on, it hit me hard. Part of me wanted to hug her. Part of me didn\u2019t want to go further. But I knew I was getting to the crux of who she was and that she\u2019d likely never again trust a reporter to go this deep.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long at the start of her career before the apparent vacuum of her personal life was filled with a persistent rumor: The diva is a dyke. How did that get started?<\/p>\n

\u201cMmmmm,\u201d Whitney hesitated. \u201cI suppose it comes from knowing people\u2026 who are. I don\u2019t care who you sleep with. If I\u2019m your friend, I\u2019m your friend. I have friends who are in the community. And I\u2019m sure that in my days of bein\u2019 out, hanging with my friends, having nothing but females around me, something\u2019s gotta be wrong with that. I ain\u2019t suckin\u2019 no dick. I ain\u2019t gettin\u2019 on my knees. I can\u2019t just really sing. I can\u2019t just be a really talented, gifted person. She\u2019s gotta be gay.\u201d<\/p>\n

With every query, she grew more animated. \u201cListen, I took a lot of grief for shit that wasn\u2019t me, okay, \u2019cause I had friends, \u2019cause I was close to people.\u201d Her hands waved, her eyes blazed. \u201cBut that ain\u2019t me. I know what I am. I\u2019m a mother. I\u2019m a woman. I\u2019m heterosexual. Period.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can be a mother and still be gay, I heard my inner voice say. You can be a lesbian and still be a woman, I wanted to remind her. But what was that going to achieve? I knew \u2014 just as I knew when Bobby Brown verbally gay-bashed me earlier in the interview\u2014that if I said what I was thinking, the interview might be terminated. For the bulk of her professional career, reporters had tried to expose her as gay to bring her down. Yet here she was with a fellow LGBTQ person who wanted her to leave the closet so I could help lift her up. I can\u2019t imagine her anguish in that moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I love everybody,\u201d she continued. \u201cIf I was gay, I would be proud to tell you, \u2019cause I ain\u2019t that kind of girl to say, \u2018Naw, that ain\u2019t me.\u2019 The thing that hurt me most was that they tried to pin something on me that I was not. My mother raised me to never, ever be ashamed of what I am. But I\u2019m not a lesbian, darling. I\u2019m not.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a mother, thank you,\u201d Whitney repeated. \u201cI love to hear my child call me Mommy. That\u2019s what I am \u2014 not lesbian, not gay, not all the bullshit\u2026 Sometimes I swear to you, it feels like nothing is going my way. Then I look at my little girl and know that she needs me for me and not anything else. That makes me wanna live on so much harder, \u2019cause I can\u2019t stand to think the world would teach her something I wouldn\u2019t teach her. That makes me live, baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

She actually said that. Three years after her mother\u2019s death, Whitney\u2019s daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, was found unconscious in a bathtub, much like Whitney had been. Bobbi died six months later at age twenty-two.<\/p>\n

Excerpted from Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music 1969-2000<\/a> with permission from the author and Penguin Random House.<\/p>\n

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