TWO-TIME EMMY-WINNER JIM PARSONS ON BEING GAY: "WHO GIVES A SH!T?"

Have you heard the news? The two-time Emmy-winning star of The Big Bang Theory is GAY!

The source of the excitement -- such as it is -- is an article in the May 23, 2012 edition of the New York Times about Parsons' upcoming starring role as Elwood P. Dowd in the Broadway revival of Harvey.


But it's funny -- when something is in "the news," you would think that it was actually "new" information, as in something that people hadn't perceived for years, or that had been confirmed since December 2011.

That's right, folks! If you had been paying close attention to Parsons, you would have known for a certainty for six months what people who read "the news" are just waking up to.

 We pick up the text of a Parsons profile ("The Man With the Golden Statue(s)") in the Winter 2011 edition of now-defunct Antenna magazine in the final two paragraphs, as the topic is turning from the diversity of male lead characters in TV sitcoms (Parsons' fellow Emmy nominees Louis C.K., Steve Carell, and Alec Baldwin) to his personal life (bold mine):

If there is one indicator of television adapting to the times, it's perhaps not this hodgepodge of shows and the success of one over another, but the presence and treatment of homosexuality.  Parsons, who's out, doesn't play a homosexual; Sheldon is straight.

"I've been watching television for years.  We've come a long way.  It's beyond just being more common -- or maybe that's the good point about it.  It's common, it's ordinary.  It's unremarkable.  I don't think we're there just yet, necessarily, but it's getting close.  I'm sure there's a segment that it is still a big deal with, but it doesn't seem to be a large enough number anymore to make it stop happening.  The larger number is with those who either feel a) I like this, or b) who gives a sh!t? And on some level, I think that 'who gives a sh!t 'is the best place in the world."

It was amusing to see the Twitterverse and the blogosphere buzzing that Parsons had come out of the closet when it was doubtful that he has been in it since he debuted on Big Bang six years ago.  As way, way, way out gay actor Alec Mapa tweeted in reaction to the relay of the "news" by People.com: "It was also on the cover of DUH! Magazine."