Wikipedia’s entry for Rip Taylor describes him as “openly gay.”
Now, I’m not disputing Rip Taylor’s gayness, because, come on – it’s Rip Taylor. But so far as I’ve always known, Rip Taylor is one of the last true “silent queens,” in the tradition of Liberace or (probably) Richard Simmons: flamboyant, oft-effiminate manner of performance, sure, but never actually outright admitting their homosexuality, for whatever reason. Everybody knows Rip Taylor is gay – holy shit is he gay – but he never talks about it directly (being the grand marshall of Pride Parades doesn’t count, Barbara Streisand does it too) and I haven’t found any mention of him officially coming out.
So, did Taylor officially admit to being gay at some point, like an interview in Out or similar? I am genuinely curious.
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The wikipedia entry does have a footnote for the “openly gay” reference:
Kolya, Nicholas (2002). You Never Ate Lunch in This Town to Begin With. iUniverse. ISBN 0595249671.
Did you see Taylor’s appearance in the Kids in the Hall‘s episode-length Buddy Cole sketch, “Chalet 2000”? There’s no way in hell that a closeted Rip Taylor could possibly have appeared in that.
That whole “being gay is okay if you’re the harmless kind who never feels the need to talk about it” drives me up the frickin’ wall.
The weird part is that at first I thought you meant Rip *Torn*.