Gay soap opera actors
Gay and Lesbian Soap Opera Actors and Actresses. Who Is Still Closeted? What’s The Scoop?
Okay, let's stop fussing about a dumb GIF and discuss about this subject.
There are very scant out soap stars. I'm trying to think of one that I realize that has been out and been on their present at the similar time and Greg Rikaart is the only one who comes to thought. Most of the ones who hold come out hold done so after their roles ended (Gregg Marx from DAYS and ATWT, Maureen Garrett from GL, Wesley Eure from DAYS).
Many of the others mentioned have had gossip about them for years.
Lady Geary is Hiding In Plain Sight, so to speak. An academic book published a decade or so ago disclosed he was gay and HIV positive, which was a reason why Genie and La Geary stopped kissing on the show (and may have led to their fallout).
Dee Dee Halls is another one oft-assumed to be a sapphic. All signs signal to this one being true, although Jane Elliot, a good friend of Dee's, is direct but is hilariously often assumed to be gay.
There's distant running rumors about Jacob Young (who supposedly fell in lust with Stephen Martines/Colton Scott, so much so that a serious brother-brother chat on screen led to an int
Living Out Loud: A Salute to Soaps’ LGBTQ+ All-Stars [PHOTOS]
Love Wins
In honor of LGBTQ+ Pride month, Soaps.com is saluting the stars of The Young and the Restless, Days of Our Lives, The Bold and the Beautiful, Beyond the Gates and General Hospital who are living their truth.
Greg Rikaart
In 2013, the Young & Restless and Days of Our Lives leading man (as Kevin Fisher and Leo Stark, respectively) came out following the Supreme Court’s decisions in favor of same-sex marriage and equality. Since 2015, the Emmy winner has been married to writer/producer Robert Sudduth (Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies), with whom he has a son, Montgomery.
Joanna Johnson
Just before Bold & Beautiful revealed that Bill Spencer’s sister Karen is a lesbian, her portrayer toldTV Guide that she is, too. For years, “I was so worried I wouldn’t be employable as an actress if people knew,” she said, “or that I wouldn’t be believable in romance stories. I had to deal with a lot of self-loathing.” Now a TV producer, Johnson has been married since 2008 to club promoter Michelle Agnew, with whom she has two childre
Did anyone else grow up watching soap operas with your grandma in the late ’90s and preliminary 2000s? There’s at least some part of me that believes this was a gay rite of passage. The guilted lovers, the hidden twin, the murder victim who really went into hiding – soap operas were the best cheese on prime time. Although I haven’t watched one in a very long time, I can imagine that a portion of campy goodness still remains. And then… there was the studly male characters waiting in the shadows to conserve the damsel in distress from a murder plot from an evil step sibling.
At one point, there were a dozen soap operas on air. Now, in 2023, there are only four sole survivors – The Bold and the Beautiful, Days of Our Lives, The Fresh and the Restless and General Hospital. Growing up, though, I watched Passions with my grandma. The virginal girl sucked into Hell through her closet door, the long-lost brother, the murderous barren who ruled the town. I can still hear McKenzie Westmore screaming “LOUIS!” to this very day. Passions is also responsible for kicking my love of Latin men into overdrive. Half the cast of Passions was certainly bang-
Celebrate Pride Month With a Salute to Soaps’ Out and Proud LGBTQ+ Stars
There are those who question why there has to be an LGBTQ+ Event Month. “We don’t get a Straight Pride Month,” they argue. But they don’t have to come out as straight, it’s assumed that they are (and that, unless told otherwise, everyone is). They haven’t had to battle for “permission” to marry the person that they cherish, it was freely given to them. They haven’t had to live in fear of what the world would think of them — or, worse, do to them — if their hetero status was revealed. And they don’t at this very moment have what LGBTQ+ people do: more than 550 proposed bills targeting their community in hopes of silencing it, stripping it of its hard-won rights and driving it back into the closet.
So there ya go. That’s why there has to be an LGBTQ+ Pride Month — and in 2025 as much, if not more, than ever.
On this occasion, Soaps wants to celebrate its out and haughty stars, the actors whose disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or trans or nonbinary status has served to arouse and empower others. It’