Leslie Roberts, a morning show anchor for CTV in Ottawa, Canada, has come out as gay. Roberts came out on Friday, National Coming Out Day.
Though he has been out privately for years, Roberts said he never came out publicly because of the way some work colleagues reacted when he told them in 1989: “I was married at the time. I had a young daughter. And the first thing everybody said was this is career suicide. This will not connect with the viewers. This will mean the end of your career in television. Things have changed.”
Roberts said he was “nudged” by Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson’s coming out in August: “I owed it to the audience to be more authentic. I also owed it to my soul.”
