Neil Patrick Harris Compares Outing to Witch-Hunt

Gay actor Neil Patrick Harris, the star of "How I Met Your Mother" told Ellen in a taped interview yesterday why he decided to come out. Check out his quotes from the show as well as "Televisionista" policy on outing after the jump.

The actor who plays a womanizing character on the CBS sitcom came out in October 2006, just days after the star of ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" T.R. Knight also announced he was gay.

On Ellen Neil explains: "There was a little of media scrutiny heading my way; people were starting to ask for stories of other people that may have fooled around with me, and the last thing you want to do is talk about your private life based on scandal."

"I'm not a very scandalous person and so I didn't want to have to respond to some story, whether it was lie or truth – so I just made a statement and sort squashed the fires."

"My life had been relatively open in my world; I've been dating the same guy for three years and our families know. We go out together all the time but I just feel like as an actor part of your occupation is retaining a bit of mystery so you can be believable in many different types of roles, so I never felt it was an obligation for me to hold pinkies down the red carpet or anything."

"[Barney] is a crazy womanizer on the show so I just didn't find [my sexual orientation] important, but other people did and I sort sensed this witch-hunt brewing."

"If someone doesn't want to talk about stuff or if someone has reason that they don't want to, I don't think they need to be criticized and chastised necessarily for that," he says, "unless they're blatantly lying about things. I'm not such a fan of pushing, pushing people to make decisions."

"For me that is the greatest ending to the story so far – that nothing really has changed at all," he says. "I'm doing nothing different and people aren't behaving differently towards me. ... People heard and they're like yeah, and? That attitude, I think, was great."



Finally, a word on the blog policy on outing since I don't think I made myself clear on that in the past.

I personally detest the very concept of "the closet" and find it essentially detrimental to the gay community as a whole.

Having said that I will never come up with a post titled "XY is Gay" (unless that celebrity choses to come out) because by using such approach I would essentially be giving one's homosexuality extraordinary status.

That however also means that if I get hold of information about a gay actor/actress dating a person of the same sex I will not treat this information any differently than a report about a heterosexual couple and I will publish it on the blog.

If I withheld such a report I feel I would in effect be saying it was justified to keep that a secret as if there was something wrong with homosexuality.

And that as you know is something I feel strongly against.

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