Mariah Carey speaks with gay-rights magazine The Advocate in their latest issue, addressing among many other things, long persistant rumors claiming that she is a bisexual.
“If it makes somebody happy to say that, then whatever, but that’s not the reality,” she said. “I don’t have a discriminatory policy of who I’m friends with, so yes, I’m friends with women who are gay — gay, straight, it doesn’t matter to me. So I don’t get upset when I hear that, because it is what it is. I guess I could lie about it to seem more exciting.”
Carey, married to actor Nick Cannon and expecting a child in the spring, is an open advocate of gay marriage rights.
“If two people want to get married, it’s their prerogative — we hope. Everybody should be able to do what they want to do and be in the pursuit of happiness,” Carey told the magazine. “Ever since I was a little girl, my mother was very open-minded and had many different types of friends, so being gay never seemed wrong or strange to me.”
In fact, Carey helped facilitate a gay marriage proposal on stage at one of her concerts in Las Vegas, demonstrating her embrace of a legion of loyal gay fans. Though she is straight, she has an idea why they all seem to connect to her.
“Maybe part of the connection is that I do write songs from an outsider perspective. A lot of my die-hard gay fans don’t just know my singles, but they also know all the album cuts,” Carey posited. “I have songs about feeling different and alienated, because I grew up with my own issues, being biracial and not having money.”
