Ricky Martin comes out: ‘Proud’ to be a gay man

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After more than a decade of speculation, singer Ricky Martin has finally settled the debate on his sexuality -- by acknowledging on Monday he’s ‘proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man.’

The ‘La Vida Loca’ hitmaker announced Monday on his official site that in the process of writing a memoir he had confronted some lingering questions (like, say, one that Barbara Walters pressed relentlessly for years ago?).

‘At this moment I’m feeling the same freedom I usually feel only on stage, without a doubt, I need to share,’ he writes in his open letter, published in Spanish and English.

Elaborating, Martin felt the has come to share his identity, ‘especially now that I am the father of two beautiful boys that are so full of light .. .to keep living as I did up until today would be to indirectly diminish the glow that my kids where [sic] born with. Enough is enough. This has to change.’

Why now, you ask? After his firestorm entrance onto the global music scene, and after withstanding years of queries direct and indirect?

‘These years in silence and reflection made me stronger and reminded me that acceptance has to come from within, and that this kind of truth gives me the power to conquer emotions I didn’t even know existed.’

And that truth, once more for the folks in back, is: ‘I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.’

-- Matt Donnelly

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