Sulu Comes Out

Star Trek's Sulu, George Takei came out in the Nov. 22 issue of the Los Angeles-based gay and lesbian magazine Frontiers. In the magazine, Takei compares going public with his sexuality to overcoming the "shame" he felt for having lived in Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.

"I didn't want to talk about being in an internment camp. They would ask me, where was I? I would say I was far away...But I never went into details."

"We talk about diversity... but there's another kind of diversity [sexual orientation] that we haven't really come to grips with as a society. And the segregationist mentality is so strong, but it's as destructive as racial segregation was in the South, or incarceration on the basis of looking like the enemy, as in the case of Japanese-Americans during the second World War- you know, it's that same mentality, and in order to be vocal on those issues, I think I need to address those issues as who I am," Takei says.

For a show that prided itself on tolerance and a progressive vision of the future, sexuality and sexual orientation were issues that Trek dealt with only peripherally. So, it is refreshing to have a real life Trek reminder of the full diversity of human sexual orientation.

More power to you, George!