Star Trek’s George Takei Comes Out

As helmsman Captain Hikaru Sulu, George Takei steered the Starship Enterprise through space, carrying his role along in three television series and six movies. In the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly magazine that targets the gay and lesbian community in Los Angeles, the 68-year old Takei tells the world that he is gay. In the interview, he says that he has shared a relationship for 18 years with Brad Altman. "The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay," he said. "The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young."

Takei says that as a child, he was ashamed of both his ethnicity and his sexuality. He has first-hand recollection of racial prejudice, since he and his family lived in Japanese internment camps for four years. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, George and his family were forced to move from their home in Los Angeles to Camp Rowar in Arkansas, and later they were moved to a camp at Tule Lake in northern California just before the end of World War II. This experience is chronicled in his 1994 autobiography, To the Stars, which was well received by millions of fans, not only Star Trek groupies. In the Frontiers interview, Takei says prejudice against gays is similar to racial segregation. "It's against basic decency and what American values stand for," he said.

Takei’s experiences during the war fueled in him a lifelong interest in politics and community affairs. He ran for the Los Angeles City Council in 1973 and currently serves on the advisory committee of the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program. He is also chairman of East West Players, the theater company producing the play "Equus," in which Takei stars as psychologist Martin Dysart. According to Takei, the character is a "very contained but turbulently frustrated man." Playing the role onstage helped inspire him to finally come out and discuss his sexuality publicly. The current social and political climate also motivated Takei's disclosure, he said. His play opened Wednesday at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles, the same day that the Frontiers magazine story about Takei was released.