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<\/p>\nShepard Smith on Coming Out at \u2018Crazy\u2019 FOX News<\/b><\/p>\n
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Fox News anchor Shepard Smith gave a speech late last month to his alma mater in which he discussed coming out as a gay man<\/a> while working at the \u201ccraziest conservative network on earth.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking April 21 at the Meek School of Journalism at the University of Mississippi, with his partner in attendance, Smith expressed how being open about his sexuality allowed him to make it a non-issue in his career and everyday work life. \u201cI don\u2019t think about it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not a thing. I go to work. I manage a lot of people. I cover the news. I deal with holy hell around me. I go home to the man<\/a> I\u2019m in love with.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, getting to that point was long in the making. At first, Smith decided avoiding the matter of his gay<\/a> identity professionally was the path of least resistance. USA Today reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n The Holly Springs,\u00a0Miss., native\u00a0said that for his college years and the first two decades of his career, he didn\u2019t hide his sexuality so much as he just steered clear of the issue entirely. He poured himself into his work because he was unprepared to deal with the consequences.<\/p>\n \u201cA.\u00a0You\u2019re going to hell for it,\u201d he said, listing the reasons he avoided the subject. \u201cB. You\u2019ll never have any friends again. C. What are you going to tell your family? And by the way, you\u2019re on television on the craziest conservative network on Earth,\u201d he joked.\u201dThat will probably put you in front of a brick wall. Of course, none of that was true, but that\u2019s how it felt.\u201d<\/p>\n That, he explained, was \u201cwhy it wasn\u2019t until seven, or eight, or nine years ago, I started living my truth \u2026\u00a0And when I told the truth, I guess it was considered that I outed myself. I didn\u2019t even think about it\u00a0because I didn\u2019t think I was in.\u201d<\/p>\n Things did get better after that point.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I figured it all out, I wasn\u2019t hiding anything,\u201d he told the audience. \u201cI was always as true to me as I knew how to be. If I was fibbing to you, it\u2019s because I was fibbing to me. And I didn\u2019t realize I was fibbing to you because I didn\u2019t know I was fibbing to me. And I know that sounds like such a load of (expletive), but it really is my truth. And I don\u2019t have to fib about anything ever again as long as I live<\/a> and that really makes everything so much easier.\u201d<\/p>\n Previously, Shepherd has denied that former Fox News chief Roger Ailes had prevented his coming out sooner<\/a>, although his recent willingness to tackle the subject\u2014he first explicitly acknowledged his orientation publicly in that October 2016 interview with the Huffington Post\u2014seems to have come only after Ailes\u2019s departure under pressure from the cable channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n The post Shepard Smith on Coming Out at \u2018Crazy\u2019 FOX News<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n