Arts & Entertainment
Matt Bomer gets candid about coming out to his family
the actor says his family is now accepting

(Screenshot via YouTube)
Matt Bomer opened up about coming out to his family and how keeping his gay identity a secret was pivotal in learning how to act, in an interview with Out.
Bomer, 39, revealed one of the ways he learned about acting was by “having secrets.”
“Subsequently, I worked on a gas pipeline with my brother for a while—there were ex-cons with us,” Bomer told Out. “It was not an environment where it was safe to be gay. So it was literally acting of the highest stakes. I had my brother to protect me, but as terrible as it may sound it was a way I learned to select behavior and make choices, even if it was a ruse just to survive, you know?”
Bomer continued that he decided to come out to his parents in a letter while working at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. The actor says he was performing in productions of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and felt inspired by the hair and makeup artist. Seeing how the person “can live their truth,” Bomer decided to be honest. At the time, Bomer says he was also dating a girl.
“I would have lost my sense of direction if I tried to do it in person. There was radio silence for a long, long time, at least six months,” Bomer says. “And then I came home and it was then the blowup that I’d always feared. But we got that out of the way and we got down to the business of figuring out how to love each other. It was a struggle. It’s a struggle for anybody to take their paradigms and their set of beliefs and their set of understandings and completely flip the script.”
Bomer has been married to publicist Simon Halls since 2011. The couple has three children. He says that his family has come a long way from when he first came out to them.
“My family is so loving. My mom just asked me, Simon, and the boys to go down and speak to her women’s group in Houston so, you know, I’m here to tell people it can get better. Because I had so many people in my life saying, ‘You need to get rid of all expectations — you need to cut them out.’ But I was like, ‘They’re my family,'” Bomer says.
The 2026 World Pride March was held on Saturday, Aug. 8 in Amsterdam. Tens of thousands of participants marched from Martin Luther Kingpark to the grounds of the Pride Village at Museumplein.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)








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The weekly drag show “Daddy Issues” was held at Kiki on Wednesday, Aug. 5. Performers included Evry Pleasure, Indiana Bones and Tiara Missou-Sidora.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)









Books
Something’s off about Dad. When is it time to step in?
‘When Memory Fades’ can help when families face dementia
‘When Memory Fades’
By Nathaniel Chin, MD
c.2026, St. Martin’s Essentials
$30/422 pages
Mom called you in a panic the other day.
She’d lost her keys and by the time you arrived to help, she’d found them. In the refrigerator.
These kinds of things keep happening, not often but often enough, and you don’t know quite what to worry about. But in the new book “When Memory Fades” by Nathaniel Chin, MD, you’ll learn about the journey ahead, for both of you.
You can’t remember why you walked into a room. You got lost last week, going to the bank. Popular wisdom says that things like that are normal as we age, but Chin says that’s not true – although the answer may not be a worst-case scenario, either. Yes, memory problems could just be signs of stress, dehydration, or lack of sleep – or is it time to see a doctor?
Chin says maybe, yes.
He was working his way through medical residency when his father, a geriatrician in Madison, Wisc., was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Chin, now a geriatrician, was blindsided, but that diagnosis also changed his life.
Here, he writes about the brain, and how Alzheimer’s and dementia are diagnosed, explaining that dementia has many faces and, depending on a doctor’s evaluation, memory problems might be slowed or improved. He shares his father’s illness with readers, but he also writes about his mother, a steadfast, steady caretaker.
Her story reminds reader-guardians to care for themselves, too.
Know how to talk the talk, so that you can have “a more productive” conversation with your doctor. Understand that there’s nothing “normal” about dementia or Alzheimer’s. Know the statistics – African Americans are affected with dementia twice as much as whites – and know how to lower your risks. Learn here what questions to ask, how to break the news to everyone, and any legal matters that will be important soon. And know how to tend to you.
Says Chin, “The best action you can take is to educate yourself… The more you understand, the better equipped you are to make sound judgments.”
Something’s off about Dad, just a lot of little things that don’t add up. When is it time to step in? “When Memory Fades” can help you decide.
Wise, wide-spread, comprehensive, and compassionately helpful, this is a book you can read and then take it to the doctor with your loved one. It’s a book that makes sense when nothing else does, and its biggest feature is that it smoothly transitions from easy-to-grasp science and charts, to gentle coaching for caregivers. Author Nathaniel Chin, MD writes with storytelling, humility, grace, and experience from both sides of the Alzheimer’s/dementia issue, and his words are reassuring but also urgent. Learn, but don’t wait, he says. Know how to safeguard yourself. See your doctor, and don’t fear testing. Watch for signs of depression. And never, ever stop asking for help.
Read those last seven words, and find “When Memory Fades” now. It’s a book to have on your shelf, whether you’re 45 or 95 because, as you’ll see, dementia happens and knowledge is key.
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