quizzical pussy

James Randi is an awesome guy. He first made his mark as a stage magician, but his greatest fame comes from his role as a front-line skeptic and rationalist. He and his James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) investigate claims of pseudoscience, paranormal, and the occult, offering a $1,000,000 prize as a challenge “to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.” Obviously, the money remains unclaimed.

He’s like the cuddly curmudgeon papa of the skeptic community.

Oh, and he likes men. Yesterday, he came out in an interview on JREF’s podcast For Good Reason, and then posted about it on his Swift Blog: “Well, here goes. I really resent the term but I use it because it’s recognized and accepted.

“I’m gay.”

At 81, his close friends and family have known all along, but he thought it was finally time to come out publicly in the interest of full disclosure. He wishes he could marry his long-time partner, but there’s no reason to since his union wouldn’t be valid in Florida, where he lives, and so they wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the later-in-life privileges that spouses automatically get.

In the interview, Randi and D.J. Grothe, who is the current president of JREF and also a gay man, talked about how pseudoscience has been used to back up bogus perceptions that gay people make bad parents or that homosexuality is aberrant and unnatural. They’re also quick to point out that JREF is not and has no plans to become a “gay organization”, they just both happen to be gay (they also both appear to be white, for whatever that’s worth, for anyone working on conspiracy theories).

The most compelling thing about the interview is the fact that although Randi’s generation has always seemed so intolerant and unaccepting, he’s never pretended to be anything he’s not to escape judgment. He says that it was unthinkable to be gay when he was growing up, but he didn’t have the luxury to not think about it. It was just who he was. He never denied being gay or positioned himself to seem straight; it just never came up. He had promised himself and others that if anyone in the media asked him directly, he’d reply: “Yes, so what?” But no one ever did. So he finally thought he should just volunteer the information, even though he insists that no one will care except his crazy detractors and enemies, and that no one should.

But actually, I kind of care. James Randi is someone I’ve looked up to for a while, and I’m not alone. Every time an amazing person comes out to the world, there’s a new opportunity for people to stop looking at LGBTQ people as “other” and start seeing them as part of “us”. Randi’s a major leader in the skeptical community, so this revelation could have a real positive impact there.

His blog entry, entitled “How To Say It?”, closes:

“I should apologize for having used Swift as the venue to publish this note, an item that is hardly the focus of what we promote and publish here, but I chose the single most public asset I have to make this statement. It’s from here that I have attacked irrationality, stupidity, and irresponsibility, and it is my broadest platform. Here is where I have chosen to stand and fight.

“And I think that I have already won this battle by simply publishing this statement.”

I think so too, Mr. Randi. You rock.