Cher is gay
Cher Thanks LGBTQ Community For Longtime Back During ‘Ups and Downs in My Career’: ‘You Guys Never Left Me’
Cher’s ties to the LGBTQ community proceed back even further than you might think.
“The first gay guys I ever met, I was 9 years old,” she said Thursday night at West Hollywood’s The Abbey, at a celebration for the bar’s new owner, Tristan Schukraft. “I walked into my house and there were these two guys there and they started talking to my mom and mom’s optimal friend. I was thinking, ‘Where have they been hiding these guys?’ I’m 9, but I mind, ‘Wait a minute… why aren’t the other guys as funny as these guys?’ It really was love at first sight.”
Cher went on to thank the gay community for its longtime support. “One thing I have to say that is serious, that is from the heart, is that I’ve had really ups and downs in my career – I mean, really! – and you guys never left me,” she said. “So thank you.”
The “Believe” singer entered The Abbey performing her 2002 single, “Song for t
After being introduced to Cher on the phone as her “old friend Chris” by Cher’s longtime publicist Liz Rosenberg, there is only one sensible way for me to respond: “Hello, old friend Cher.”
Calling Cher an elderly friend to Cher feels completely natural — good, almost. There is at least some familiarity in knowing her off the phone too, through a treasure trove of a half-century’s worth of creative contributions, even if the icon is a higher pop culture power. But then, at the equal time, the enduring same-sex attracted icon has also been like an old buddy to those in the LGBTQ+ community, including me.
Just a couple of years after coming out at 18, I saw my first Cher concert with my mom, who brought Cher into my earth when I was a young kid, before I felt confident enough to tell her I was gay (weird to contemplate that now even Cher knows I’m gay). The 2002 show at the Palace of Auburn Hills, part of her not-so-farewell “Farewell Tour,” is one of my earliest memories of finding other lgbtq+ people outside of male-for-male AOL chat rooms — so many gay Cher fans in one large space, a glittery, strutting pop goddess our master of ceremoni
Cher is so low-key about being Cher that calling her is like calling your mom. "Hi," she purrs with signature simplicity when I phone her presidential suite in behind August. We are speaking matter-of-factly about gay things, political things, Twitter things ("I'm finished with the emojis that we have"). About going to Walgreens and trying to retain why she went to Walgreens. This seems so very … normal?
Certainly, Cher is the most multi of multi-hyphenates – fiery human rights activist, Auto-Tune pioneer, a unicorn, the Phoenix – but no, not at all normal. Not from down here, where we've basked in the long-reigning diva's treasure trove of clip and music and bedazzled Bob Mackie costumes, and admired her ability to get down, do a five-minute plank (seriously), and somehow get back up again. That motion is the time-tested motion of Cher's enduring six-decade career. It's where grit meets guts meets glitter.
Our Oz, our Wonderland; a guarded, shimmering space providing escapist refuge since the 1960s, a span which has seen Sonny (Bono, her late ex-husband) and Cher, anthemic rock and queer dance, inventions and reinventions – Cher's mere life brought us closer to those w
CHER: THE SINGLE GREATEST Homosexual ICON OF ALL TIME
Cher is the single greatest gay icon of all time. Don’t get me wrong as I cherish all superstar female vocalists and pop stars and many of them acquire icon status in the LGBT community. Judy Garland was the first and original gay icon. I have seen almost all of them live in concert, met a several of them and I am very familiar with their careers. So I know iconography very good and fascinated with it. In fact, I hosted a show on Public RadioKPFK’s LGBT Day during LA Pride, titled, “Icons & Idols”. My guests and I discussed the biggest gay icons of the last one-hundred years.
Although there are several stars who are much loved, admired and idolized by the LGBT community, Cher stands out as the biggest gay icon of all time. I won’t bother to chronicle Cher’s illustrious career in this piece as that would take a year’s worth of research and interviews, a feat others own accomplished successfully in the past. I will simply highlight relevant bullet-points that I believe make Cher the Ultimate Gay Representative of All Time.
1946: Cherilyn Sarkisian is born in El Centro, CA on May 20th.
1962: Cher was sixteen years
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