proud to be a raging homosexual. it's taken 20 years of suffocating in the closet for me to become comfortable enough to say it, but now I can finally breathe. i did it!

A photo posted by @ryanbeatty on Jun 28, 2016 at 5:37pm PDT

I'm very proud of 20-year-old singer Ryan Beatty, who came out on Instagram, playfully declaring he is “a raging homosexual.” I say proud because I chose him as one of the stars of 2012 (we were often early on this stuff, often to the detriment of sales!) when I ran a teen magazine. We feted him and 11 others at a party in L.A. He was a very sweet boy, and I believed in his talent and his ability to generate interest online. It's gratifying to see him shrug off religious considerations and declare himself a proud gay man.

He can “finally breathe”—what a fitting way to describe it.

Here's a Tweet from 2012 when we had our party, showing Ryan with Cody Simpson's sister, Alli:

(Image via Twitter)