Singer Demi Lovato recently revealed on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast that she is a member of the LGBTQ community and most closely identifies with the term pansexual.
"I'm so fluid now," she said on the podcast, "and a part of the reason why I am so fluid is because I was super closeted off."
Lovato, 28, blamed that on being raised in a religious, conservative family.
"I felt a lot of shame because growing up in Texas as a Christian, that's very frowned upon. Any attraction I had to a female at a young age, I shut it down before I even let myself process what I was feeling."
The revelation is something of an about face. When Lovato spoke to Pride Source's Chris Azzopardi in 2017, she played coy, turning down Azzopardi when he offered her the opportunity to clear up any misconceptions about her sexual identity.
"Your sexuality has been thoroughly dissected by the Internet after you alluded to being open to both genders. I want to give you the opportunity to speak on it as directly as you'd like," he said.
Lovato replied, "Thank you for the opportunity, but I think I'm gonna pass."
"I just feel like everyone's always looking for a headline and they always want their magazine or TV show or whatever to be the one to break what my sexuality is," Lovato said at the time. "I feel like it's irrelevant to what my music is all about. I stand up for the things that I believe in and the things that I'm passionate about, but I like to keep my personal life as private as possible when it comes to dating and sexuality and all that stuff just because it has nothing to do with my music.
"Unfortunately, we live in a world where everyone is trying to get that soundbite," she continued, "and I am purposefully not giving the soundbite. Watch my documentary … if ever I want to talk about it, I want it be on my own terms."
Opinions on whether Lovato should have opened up about her sexuality at the time given her general openness and that her music toyed with queerness, while not directly acknowledging her own, varied. Huffington Post Editorial Director Noah Michelson penned an op-ed, "Demi Lovato's Reason For Refusing To Talk About Her Sexuality Is Total Bulls**t," writing that, "By giving Lovato the opportunity to address her sexuality in whatever way she wanted to, Azzopardi was allowing her to control the narrative and to decide how she would be seen going forward." Grindr's now-defunct digital magazine INTO published this essay, which speaks for itself: "Demi Lovato Doesn't Owe The Public A Coming Out Story."
Just last year, Lovato, a longtime supporter of the LGBTQ+ community, was engaged to a man, namely Max Ehrich.
"I was engaged to a man and when it didn't work, I was like, 'This is a huge sign,'" Lovato told Rogan. "I thought I was going to spend my life with someone. Now that I wasn't going to, I felt this sense of relief that I could live my truth."
In a March cover story with Glamour, Lovato said she is "too queer" to be with a cisgender man.
"I hooked up with a girl and was like, 'I like this a lot more.' It felt better. It felt right.
In the podcast, Lovato said, "I heard someone call the LGBTQIA+ community the 'alphabet mafia' That's it! That's what I'm going with. I'm part of the alphabet mafia and proud."
