Apple CEO Tim Cook, in an essay published early Thursday, revealed he is gay — making him the most powerful executive to come out.
The news, discussed and debated throughout the day in the business and general media, barely caused a ripple in Apple stock.
“While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now,” Cook, 53, said in the essay published in Bloomberg Businessweek. “So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”
Cook is the first Fortune 500 company CEO to openly proclaim he or she is gay, according to several reports.
The CEO’s public admission of what had been an open secret for years among many Silicon Valley insiders, was met with mostly positive reaction from Apple fans, fellow business leaders, sports icons and politicians.
“Thank you Tim for showing what it means to be a real, courageous and authentic leader,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page.
“So proud of Apple CEO @tim_cook,” tweeted former NBA player Jason Collins, who was the first in the league to come out while still playing.
Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), stridently anti-gay marriage, shrugged his shoulders at the news. “Those are his personal choices. I’ll tell you, I love my iPhone,” he said.
The largely laudatory reaction is a far cry from seven years ago when John Browne, CEO of oil giant BP, stepped down after his former lover outed him as being gay and spilled details in the UK media about Browne’s lavish lifestyle.
In June, Browne published a book called “The Glass Closet,” detailing his experience as a closeted CEO and encouraging other gay and lesbian business leaders to come out.
“It’s better for you, your business and the economy when you bring your authentic self to work,” Browne has said.
Still, some experts said they don’t expect a flood of gay and lesbian business leaders to start talking publicly about their sexuality, in part because 29 states still lack protections against discrimination of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the workplace.
Indeed, gay advocates on Thursday were quick to point out on Thursday that Cook is among a privileged group who works in an industry and a state that is accepting of gay rights. But other C-Suite executives may fear backlash, if not from their colleagues then from their customers, experts warned.
In one of the more odd responses to the news, a member of the City Council in St. Petersburg, Russia, called for Cook to be “banned for life” from the city.
But Morty Singer of Marvin Traub Associates, which advises retailers on expansion into markets like China and the Middle East, pooh-poohed fears that Cook’s coming out could hurt Apple’s global expansion, saying it hasn’t been a problem for the fashion industry before.
Apple shares closed down 0.3 percent at $106.98.
Additional reporting by James Covert