Pop star, Mika, won’t say if he’s gay or straight. I contend that he’s gay, but even he accepts the label of bisexual, which is gay enough.
Ignoring his stupid epistemology, let’s examine why I think it’s safe to conclude that he’s gay without him saying so.
Before I get to that, I want to emphasize that I do not think there is anything wrong with being gay and so I regard the issue as being neutral with regard to the level of enjoyment I get from his music. More simply: this is just not an important question.
First, his music contains numerous citations to gay sub culture ranging from the falsetto style of singing a la Freddie Mercury, to which he makes a reference in the song Grace Kelly. A Grace Kelly reference is also fairly gay for a person of his age. Billy Brown is about a married man who runs off with another man and then a woman and then a man.
More importantly, there’s the fact that he won’t say if he’s gay or straight. If he were straight, then saying he’s straight would not mean anything to anyone. It would be a non-issue to both gays and straights. If he were gay, then saying he’s straight would outrage gay fans who would work to out him to the world. (Politically, gays as a group are generally accepting of people who refuse to publicly declare their sexuality as an acknowledgment of the simple fact that we do live in a society that does not fully accept homosexuality.) If he’s straight, then saying he’s gay would outrage straight fans. If he’s gay, then saying he’s gay would outrage his straight fans.
We might argue that his gay fans outnumber his straight fans, but that would also pigeon-hole his music for the future.
Looking at this as a game, if Mika cannot safely claim to be straight, then his safest, most profitable claim is to say that he is neither gay nor straight. Gay people will wink and nod. Straight people will say, “See? He’s not gay!”
This is simply part of the “privilege” of being straight in our culture. If you’re straight, your sexuality is invisible to the world. If you’re gay, then your sexuality is a MAJOR ISSUE. Gays in public eye where one’s sexuality may be a burden or a boon are best advised to not go public with their sexuality simply because it would shift an unknown number of people against them. Just look at Jodie Foster, Kevin Spacey, Rock Hudson, and Anderson Cooper.
So, with regard to Mike, I’m telling you: dude is gay.
Mika is so gay.