Apple CEO Tim Cook has come out as gay for the first time, declaring his sexual orientation is one of the ‘greatest gifts God has given me’.
Mr Cook, 53, said he had been open with many people about his sexuality for years but wanted to maintain a level of privacy in the public sphere.
However, in a first-person article for BloombergBusinessweek, he said he hopes coming out will inspire people to insist on their right to equality – and that is ‘worth the trade-off with my own privacy’.
The declaration makes Mr Cook the highest-profile business CEO to have come out as being gay.
Writing in Businessweek Mr Cook wrote: ‘Let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.
‘Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day.
‘It’s made me more empathetic, which has led to a richer life.’
He added: ‘If hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy.’
Part of social progress, Mr Cook explained, is understanding that a person is not defined by singular characteristics like their sexuality, and urged readers to remember that he is also engineer, an uncle, a nature lover, a fitness nut, a son of the South, a sports fanatic, and many other things.
But he conceded that he is part of a minority that could greatly benefit from his support.
Throughout the 800-word essay, Mr Cook describes a ‘tough and uncomfortable’ existence at times from his ‘humble roots’ in Alabama to global success in Silicon Valley.
America, he said, ‘has changed so much since I was a kid’ and is moving towards equality, something helped by brave public figures that had come out and changed public perceptions.
Nonetheless, with laws still in place across the U.S. that make sexuality a sack-able offense, he said being gay has given him a ‘deeper understanding’ of what it means to be a minority.
It had also made him more confident in his own identity, helped him ‘rise above adversity and bigotry’ and to develop the ‘skin of a rhinoceros’ that it takes to run a company like Apple.
The motivation to write this article was inspired by the pictures on his office wall of Robert F Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who said: ‘Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, “What are you doing for others?”‘
If hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone…then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy
Tim Cook writing in BusinessWeek
While not considering himself an ‘activist’, Mr Cook said he realizes how much he had benefited from the ‘sacrifice of others’ so knew he needed to speak out.
He said Apple had long advocated for human rights and equality.
For example, he lists Apple’s support of a workplace equality bill before Congress, and of marriage equality in California.
In February, the company issued a public appeal to the state of Arizona urging them to abandon an anti-gay bill that would permit discrimination on religious grounds.
The company, he said, holds up Dr King and Kennedy as icons for that ideal.
Mr Cook wrote: ‘I don’t pretend that writing this puts me in their league.
‘All it does is allow me to look at those pictures and know that I’m doing my part, however small, to help others.
‘We pave the sunlit path toward justice together, brick by brick. This is my brick.’
In June, shortly before Mr Cook attended San Francisco’s 44th annual Gay Pride Parade, he was accidentally outed on a CNBC current affairs show live on-air.
Simon Hobbs was one of several co-hosts when New York Times columnist Jim Stewart appeared on CNBC’s Friday edition of Squawk on the Street to talk about an article he’d written that explores the dearth of openly gay CEOs.
Speaking about how former CEO of BP Lord Browne became the first person at a Fortune 500 company to publicly acknowledge that he is gay, Mr Stewart said there’s a ‘corporate culture that prevents powerful gay men from going public.’
He said: ‘You’d think CEOs especially are measured by objective criteria, financial performance.
Mr Stewart then went on to say that he had contacted a number of CEOs for a comment for his story and received a ‘very cool reception’.
Then co-host Mr Hobbs piped up, saying, ‘I think Tim Cook is fairly open about the fact he’s gay at the head of Apple, isn’t he?’
For a moment, a deafening silence filled the studio as the hosts looked awkwardly from one to the other before Mr Stewart, shaking his head in disapproval, responds with a succinct, ‘No.’
Hobbs tried to recover, ‘Oh, dear, was that an error? I thought he was open about it.’