Gay country singer Ty Herndon talks ‘shame’ of drug arrest outing him
Ty Herndon (Getty Images)
Gay country singer Ty Herndon has opened up about his struggles with drug addiction and being in the closet in his new memoir, ‘What Mattered Most’. Herndon made headlines in 2014 when he became the first major country musician to come out as gay.
Speaking to the Guardian about his memoir on 26 March, he said: “The drugs could be forgiven. Being gay definitely could not.”
Prior to his coming out, Herndon’s sexuality was the subject of much speculation in the country music world, thanks to the public nature of his arrest in 1995 after an undercover male police officer alleged that Herndon exposed himself to him. He was also discovered to be in possession of methamphetamine when he was taken into custody.
READ MORE: Country singer Ty Herndon: Support after coming out ‘blew my mind’
The singer was sentenced to community service and drug rehabilitation while the indecent exposure charge was dropped. However, the speculation about Herndon’s sexual orientation continued until he finally came out in 2014 in an interview with People magazine.
Herndon knew he was gay from a young age but his sexuality sat at odds with his Christian faith for a long time. “I was a flamboyant little kid. I sashayed up to that church like I owned it!” he remembered. Unfortunately, his queerness eventually got him singled out by the church’s preacher, who denounced homosexuality and told him it was “an ungodly sickness that corrupts the soul”.
“To have someone who I thought was going to be my ally turn into my enemy started the ball rolling on so many things,” Herndon said.
Scared to come out, he ended up marrying a woman, his friend Renee Posey, in 1993. “What I really wanted was to tell the world I was gay, but in 1995 that was not possible,” he told the Guardian.
Three years after Herndon’s arrest, a similar story about a police entrapment scheme targeting another closeted gay musician – none other than George Michael – hit the headlines.
“I just wish I had his phone number,” Herndon told the Guardian. “Holy cow, it would have been great to have somebody to talk to about that. His level of stardom was way more than mine, but the shame is the same.”
However, decades on, Herndon’s outlook on his ordeal has shifted, which was his driving force behind the memoir. “For so long I was driven by the need to make people forget that story,” he said. “Now, I don’t want them to forget it. I want them to know everything.”
Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.
