Tim Cook comes out

NEW YORK » Apple CEO Tim Cook's declaration that he's "proud to be gay" wasn't exactly news in Silicon Valley, where his sexual orientation was no secret. But advocates say that given Apple's immense reach and visibility, his coming-out could help change attitudes in workplaces across America.

The 53-year-old successor to Steve Jobs made the announcement in an essay published Thursday by Bloomberg Businessweek. He is the highest-profile U.S. business executive to publicly acknowledge that he's gay.

In a country where more major-league athletes have come out than top CEOs, business leaders said Cook's disclosure was an important step toward easing anti-gay stigma, particularly for employees in the many states where people can still be fired for their sexual orientation.

Cook, who led Out magazine's top 50 most powerful people for three years, said in the essay that while he never denied his sexuality, he never openly acknowledged it, either. He said he acted now in the hopes that his words could make a difference to others.

"I've come to realize that my desire for personal privacy has been holding me back from doing something more important," he wrote.

Cook said he considers being gay "among the greatest gifts God has given me" because it has given him both a better understanding of what it means to be in the minority and "the skin of a rhinoceros, which comes in handy when you're the CEO of Apple."

Besides Cook, there are no other openly gay CEOs in the Fortune 1,000, even though statistically, 3.4 percent of Americans identify as something other than straight, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control. Some executives of major U.S. corporations who are openly gay at their companies declined to comment to The Associated Press.

John Browne, who resigned as British Petroleum CEO in 2007 after being outed by a tabloid and who is the author of "The Glass Closet: Why Coming Out Is Good Business," said Cook has become a role model "and will speed up changes in the corporate world."

Megan Smith, a lesbian who was a top executive at Google before recently becoming the U.S. government's chief technology officer, predicted "people will look back at this time not only for the extraordinary technological innovations that keep coming, but also for great shifts in civil rights and inclusion of talent across our world. Tim is a big part of both of these important movements."