Former N'Sync star Lance Bass is the cover boy of the landmark 1000th issue of The Advocate magazine and inside he talks about his first relationship to a man and about how it was to come out of the closet.

About his first relationship with a man:
"Still, to this day, he's with women only, and I was the only guy he was ever with... To have that be your first relationship is really confusing because that sets the precedent for everything you're going to have to deal with in future relationships. I had feelings — huge feelings — that weren't reciprocated."

About being accepted by the gay community:
"You know, every community is hard to please. Our community is very fickle. It's a touchy community because it's the last civil rights movement we have left here in America. So when someone new like myself comes along and says off-the-mark things, yeah, I can see how people would get pissed... When most people come out, they deal with it out of the public eye, and they start getting educated about it. Me, I had 24 hours to say what I had to say on a subject that I had no clue about"

On hiding his homosexuality as a member of N'Sync:
"I was always watching what I said, what I did, ... You would learn so many things throughout the years, like, gay people do this and gay people say this. I remember one time someone told me that if you say the word so a lot, that's a tell that you're gay. I was so afraid to say the word so in anything I did! That's how crazy things got for me."

About his relationship with Reichen Lehmkuhl:
"I was finally in a relationship I was proud of, ... I was very much in love, and when you're in love, you don't care what people think. ... I saw how half the [gay] people hated Reichen's guts — they didn't just dislike him, they hated him — and then the other half just loved him, ... I never could understand that."

Bass now says he wants to help gay artists succeed in the music biz:
"The music business says you can't be openly gay and be successful, which I think is crap. I want to go out and search for a musical act, develop them, make their first album, everything—and all that time they're openly gay."

The new issue of The Advocate is on newsstands December 18.

Last update: 12-13-2007 22:36