Clay Aiken says he “died inside” after being outed on The View

In 2006, gay people were living through a new dark age. We were still trapped in the Bush era, years away from Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert, and Ryan Murphy 360 programming. Even prominent Broadway stars didn’t feel comfortable coming out publicly.

But in November of that year, we witnessed two important watershed moments: Neil Patrick Harris officially came out, and American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken was outed.

To be fair, both men were outed: and both men used the occasion to come out on their own terms. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t painful. For Aiken, being accidentally outed by fellow gay icon Rosie O’Donnell on The View was, at the time, a deadly feeling.

It all started with the shush moment heard round the world: during an appearance on Live With Regis and Kelly, Aiken awkwardly put his hand over Kelly Ripa’s mouth in a moment he instantly regretted. Ripa was pissed, but her reaction accidentally launched Aiken into one of the most painful moments of his career.

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“I don’t know where that hand’s been, honey,” Ripa said.

When Rosie O’Donnell heard that, she was incensed. Responding to the incident on The View, where she served as moderator from 2006 to 2007, she classified Ripa’s words as “homophobic.”

“From where I sit as a gay person in the world, I have to tell you, that’s how it came off to me,” O’Donnell told Ripa directly when she called into the show.

But Aiken saw it differently. “You say defended,” Aiken recently told Page Six Radio’s Evan Real, “I say outed.”

While Aiken wouldn’t formally come out until two years later, he credits that moment as one of the most “catastrophic” in his career.

In 2006, being outed was serious business. But O’Donnell, one of the few out and proud celebrities of the time, wasn’t going to hold back. In an era soaked with casual homophobia, she was ready to call out bad behavior, perhaps not totally realizing that her comments reflected on Aiken’s personal life.

Another problem with 2006 is that you couldn’t simply call out language for being homophobic without the story becoming about another person’s sexuality. Today, celebrities of all sexualities are empowered enough to call out homophobic behavior when they see it. O’Donnell’s words, however, cut into Aiken’s hopes for a future mainstream career. His friend (and later co-parent) called him up after The View aired, saying: “You need to wake up because Rosie just outed you.”

These days, it’s all water under the bridge. “I don’t have any ill feelings against Rosie,” Aiken says. “She did mean well. Her words were chosen in the heat of, like, why the hell is [Ripa] on live TV with me right now?”

O’Donnell’s words certainly weren’t meant to embarrass or out the “Invisible” singer, especially since queer people were rooting for the American Idol runner-up long before he came out. Even if the culture was homophobic, queer fans knew what we had in Aiken: someone whose soft masculinity felt like a welcome departure from the toxic, aggressively straight expectations for men during those dark days.

The world might not have been ready for Aiken in 2006, in the closet or out of it. But queer people were desperate for what he had to give. We were always on his side, and we still are—and Rosie is, too.

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