MSNBC.com

By Josh Grossberg

This just in from CNN: One of its star anchors is ready to make a big announcement. Weekend anchor Don Lemon has revealed that he is gay.

"Today I chose to step out on faith and begin openly living my own truth...There was a time when I was terrified of revealing these things to the person I love most in this world--my own mother. But when I finally mustered the courage to tell her that I had been molested as a child and that I was born gay, my life began to change in positive ways that I never imagined possible," says the 45-year-old newsman, who is making the rounds in support of his new memoir, Transparent.

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"Yet I still chose to keep those secrets hidden from the world. I, like most gay people, lived a life of fear. Fear that if some employers, coworkers, friends, neighbors and family members learned of my sexuality, I would be shunned, mocked and ostracized. It is a burden that millions of people carry with them every single day. And sadly, while the mockery and ostracizing are realized by millions of people every day, I truly believe it doesn't have to happen."

Lemon is the latest in a growing list of journalists to publicly acknowledge they are gay, including MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Thomas Roberts.

Ultimately, Lemon's revelation about his own sexuality comes eight months after he dropped another bombshell--this one on the air. While reporting on a piece about a sex scandal in an Atlanta church, he admitted that he was also the victim of sexual abuse as a child but kept it a secret for years.

"As a journalist I believe that part of my mission is to shed light onto dark places," says Lemon, who's been with CNN since 2006. "So, the disclosure of this information does not inhibit in any way my ability to be the professional, fair and objective journalist I have always been."

Amen to that.

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