Jodie Foster seemed nervous.
To any of her fans or any of us old enough to have grown up with Foster, she seemed more nervous last evening than she did as a young woman facing down hoards of media attention. But make no doubt Foster knew exactly what she was doing. When Jodi leaned over the microphone to accept the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award at the 70th Annual Golden Globes and said that she was ready to say something she'd been holding back on for many, many years, anyone who is a true Foster fan knew the announcement middle America was waiting for was not going to happen.
We also knew Foster wanted our full and complete attention because she doesn't do media stunts. She doesn't play these games. She was ready to be heard.
To those who expected Foster to announce publicly that she is gay, the speech was likely a disappointment. Certainly celebrity news opportunists like Harvey Levin and Perez Hilton were deleting hastily written posts for their websites when Foster said little more than "I'm single" as her big announcement. The subsequent outcry from some in the LGBTQ was perhaps far more surprising than Foster's refusal to publicly come out.
It seems lost on far too many people that what Foster is doing is actually ground breaking. In an age when LGBTQ artists and actors are being shoved out of the sexual orientation closet by their publicists and the media, Foster is taking a stand. And she is 100% correct in the stand that she is taking. Why she is correct is clear.
Foster understands that there will be no true equality until the question is irrelevant. The mere question itself is an act of discrimination. And those who insist she somehow owes it to the LGBTQ community to come out or to have come out years ago don't seem to understand that it is no more their right to ask that question or demand that of her than it is homo-obsessed Hollywood media's right.
Jodie Foster is not responsible to make your life any easier. She is not yours to claim. Her private life is not yours to own or to attach yourself to or to help you feel stronger about your decisions or being in the closet or being out of the closet.
She is not your property.
In the end, Foster said something last evening that went unnoticed by many - she has never been "in the closet". Her friends and family have known who she is since she was a teen. She just didn't make that the public or media's business.
You see, Jodie Foster was never in the closet and is now not out of the closet. And do you know why? Because the contents of that closet are none of your damn business.
