Queen Latifah at Long Beach Pride

Here's a somewhat shaky video from Queen Latifah's headlining performance at the 29th Annual Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride Festival (source ).

I've stayed away from the "is she, or isn't she?" conversation, but her comments from the festival that she was proud to be among "her people" only leads to more speculation.  Aja Worthy-Davis makes a good case for a celebrity not "coming out" (which I should add, not publicly coming out is not the same as remaining "closeted").

"The question ‘why does a celebrity owe anyone a coming out' is usually met with the answer that living in the public eye means you accept a certain degree of invaded privacy, and that your life and choices have meaning to at least some people you've never met. The gay kid who was going to make a bad decision, go down a murky road, turned back because an actor he likes is gay too. Because someone like him made it, and is happy and healthy and whole. And I can respect that both gay and straight culture need positive gay role models, but I also think it's important to acknowledge that many young people (specifically those brought up in pro-gay environments) are being open about their queerdom as early as they can self-perceive it. And if that is a trend that continues as American culture makes the agonizingly slow tread towards legal and social equality, is it really fair to continue to demand that celebrities take on the (perhaps unwanted) task of publicly coming out for the sake of social visibility?"

Monica from TransGriot elucidates further that the stakes for black actresses are higher:

"If you're a public figure like Queen Latifah and Raven are you have to decide whether coming out is worth the money and roles you're going to lose out on in a vanillacentric Hollywood that is already hard enough for straight cisgender Black actresses to work in."

My $0.02? Queen Latifah doesn't "owe" anybody anything, and it shouldn't be a requirement that she now be an LGBT role model, assuming she has taken these few, small steps. She's made it pretty clear she supports gay rights; whether or not she wants to talk about her own sexuality is her business, plain and simple. Though living in the public eye, it's obviously not that simple.