Mond Gutierrez Officially Confirms The “Open Secret” That He’s A Proud Member Of LGBTQ Community
“I’m here to formally say that I am a proud member of the LGBTQ community. And it feels great saying that publicly because I am.”
“I am out to a lot of my close friends and I’m lucky that I have that support system around me to give me the confidence to really accept who I am and to love myself because not a lot of people have that? Some people feel alone, some people feel like they don’t have anyone to run to. I’m lucky that I’m surrounded with a lot of great people in my life my family, my friends,”
“Growing up, it was hard for me to even acknowledge even who I am. Like, what is this? I had my brother who was so similar to me but so different in so many ways. But he never had to explain his sexuality, so why should I? And that was my thinking growing up. But then entering show business at 19—well, I was a kid—but going back again to show business at 19 to be a TV host, that’s when it really hit me that, ‘Wow, being gay is really not accepted in a lot of these communities.’”
And that came as a rude awakening to Mond.
“Back then, being the new person on TV, I was bullied by a lot of the older people in the studios. Being gay now is not the same as being gay back then. 10 years ago, it was totally different. You feel like a mutant? You walk in to backstage and people will say, ‘Ah, ‘ di ba ‘yun ‘yung baklang kapatid ni Richard?’ Like, I can literally hear them. And because of those moments where people really wanted to put me in a corner and really label me and kind of diminish my skills and diminish what I can bring to the table because of my sexual preference (that I didn’t even realize—I didn’t even know at that time?) I was still going through so many emotions at that time that I had no idea. Like, ‘Can I go through this first before you label me anything?’” (READ FULL ARTICLE HERE)
