Thank you, Tim Cook

Great article by Casey Newton on Tim Cook's coming out earlier this week:

There was a time when I struggled to come to terms with myself; when I felt alone; when I scanned the horizon looking for someone to point the way forward for me. There was a time when the only other gay men I knew were the ones I saw in TV and movies, and they seemed nothing like me. It feels embarrassing to say now that what I wanted back then was a role model — someone confident in himself, powerful, a real leader — to give me permission to be myself. But I very much did.

And many still do, particularly younger people, and particularly younger people growing up in the more rural and religious parts of America. Someday, maybe someday soon, we’ll hear about how Cook’s essay today helped someone there through a difficult time. And then we’ll hear it again, and again, and again.

And another, from Kara Swisher at Recode:

With his CEO status now as firm as it has ever been, and the company pretty unassailable, Cook seemed completely ready, criticizing his home state of Alabama in a speech there about its failures in the civil rights arena. “As a state, we took too long to step toward equality,” he said. “We were too slow on equality for African-Americans. We were too slow on interracial marriage, and we are still too slow for the equality for the LGBT community.”

That was this past Monday. At a dinner I attended earlier this week, what he said came up in conversation, and someone wondered what he was up to. With no idea about what he was about to do, I had only one response: “I think we are finally about to meet the real Tim Cook.”

And, while we might have known it all along about him, it’s nice to finally be able to say hello to the entire man.