Apple's Cook: "I'm proud to be gay"

[SAN FRANCISCO] Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook on Thursday became the most prominent American corporate leader to come out as gay, saying he was trading his closely guarded privacy for the chance to help move civil rights forward.

The 53-year-old Alabama native and self-described "son of the South", who has spoken out against discrimination of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, declared his sexual orientation in a magazine editorial, confirming a fact widely known in the close-knit Silicon Valley tech community but rarely discussed.

Cook's announcement comes as gay marriage is becoming widespread, but the nation remains divided over gay rights. Same-sex marriage is legal in thirty-two U.S. states and in polls a majority support same-sex marriage, with a clear generational divide between younger Americans who are more likely to support it and older ones who are less likely. "I'm proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me," Cook said in an article he wrote in Bloomberg Businessweek. He invoked civil rights luminaries Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King in his long essay. "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." The fact the chief executive of the most valuable US publicly traded company felt he could disclose his sexual preference in such a public way, and with the backing of the company's chairman, shows how times have changed.