He has consciously dodged the question for years, but Anderson Cooper felt the time was right to admit he is gay in an online essay posted Monday.
The CNN journalist and host of an afternoon talk show on CBS 5, said he has tried to keep a lot of his personal life private, partly for personal reasons, but also for professional reasons.
Cooper's admission came in a reply to a request from Andrew Sullivan of the Daily Beast.
"For my safety and the safety of those I work with, I try to blend in as much as possible, and prefer to stick to my job of telling other people's stories, and not my own," Cooper wrote to Sullivan.
Cooper said he feels that the less an interview subject knows about him, the more safely and effectively he can do his job as a journalist.
He said a reporter's politics, religion or "who they love" should not be something they should have to discuss publicly, as long as fairness and honesty is maintained.
He said he has often been directly asked "the gay question."
"The fact is I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn't be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud," he wrote.
Cooper said there might have been some unintended outcomes associated with maintaining his privacy, and that he didn't want to give the mistaken impression he was hiding something.
Cooper is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt and had long been the subject of rumors about his sexual orientation. He said that in a perfect world, it wouldn't be anyone's business, but that there is value in "standing up and being counted."
"I still consider myself a reserved person and I hope this doesn't mean an end to a small amount of personal space," he wrote. "But I do think visibility is important, more important than preserving my reporter's shield of privacy."
Copyright 2012 CBS 5 (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
