Robin Robertswants you to know she’s not an activist.
“I say, God bless the activists! Because what they do is so important,” she tells PEOPLE in the cover story for this week’s Pride Issue. But, as a public figure that millions ofGood Morning Americaviewers listen to every morning — as someone whose very job it is to tell the truth — she knows her words carry weight. So she tends to choose hers carefully. Like when she first came out, to her sister.
“I decided to tell my sister Dorothy [when] I was in my 20s. I knew I had to tell her,” she recalls.
Roberts, 61, remembers it happening this way: “We went out to lunch. I’ll never forget it. We’re sitting down, I’m working up the nerve, over sweet tea, tospillthe tea. And right when I say to her, just like out of the movies, ‘Dorothy, I’m gay,’ the server put down our lunch. Then he fiddled around for what felt like five minutes.”
She continues, “And so I’ve just told my sister I’m gay, and she’s crying, and we have to wait for the server. Finally, the server walked away. And I look at her and she goes, ‘Oh, oh, I’m not crying because you told me you’re gay. I’m crying because you love me enough to tell me that.'”
Naima Green
Says Roberts, “For the longest time, before I came out publicly [in 2013], I would think, ‘Well, everybody knows I am gay. My family knows I am gay. My colleagues, bosses….’ All true. If I was walking down the street I would introduce my partner,Amber [Laign].” But she wasn’t ready to say it publicly, even though she felt she was being public. “What a waste of time! Andwhy? Because I was afraid. Because I was afraid people couldn’t think I could be a Christianandgay.”
“But people got it,” she remembers. “They said, ‘Oh, she’s just grateful,’ they said. ‘It’s just love.’ They didn’t make it anything more than me living my life. And then I realized, if somebody who looks like me was to come along, maybe I could give them a little more courage. Maybe they would know they were not walking alone.”
source: people.com
