Such a shame...

Stephen Gately. Member of Boyzone.

That's all we woulda known - unless his brave soul would have came out. Literally.

His need to tell the the world he was gay was one more voice speaking out against the norm. Yes - gay. Bad word. How dare he? And yet, dare, he did. It's not so shocking. Neither should have it been for a group of five men, that one of them would have been particial to a bit of the "other". He is, was, gay. No excuses. No apology. Just a simple statement of fact.

I'm deliberately writing this now, before sordid details of private life are exposed before the baying for blood. Private is just that. I don't care. Stephen's honesty opened me to be honest with with my closest friends - that my my mum was, and is indeed, gay.

Yes, lil miz rock chick had an excuse to like a boy band. It was a point of reference to point to when she was telling her her friends her mama wasn't *quite* normal.

Yes, he was a point of reference when her male friend, who everyone assumed was *into* her, needed to tell a secret.

He was a normal man. In love. Living the way he wanted to. The way he felt right.

He was (god, it hurts saying *was*... should be IS!) a hero by being exactly as Stephen Gately is. A normal, Irish, brunette, funny, quite short, male. Oh yeah, and gay.

My warmest love and hopes go to those he loved.

In this small insistance, he helped more than he could ever know. It's a shame I wrote this before it was too late to say. I figure he'd be the sort of person who would read it.