April 18, 1995: Chastity Bono comes out.

Like Advocate cover boy Christopher Landon, celebrities' children have long been the targets of tabloid gossip, especially when it comes to their sexual orientation.

Today, Chastity Bono, Sonny and Cher's daughter, is an out lesbian, cultural activist, and author who has just completed a tour for her recent book, Family Outing. She has been entertainment media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, a writer for The Advocate, and the leader of a band, Ceremony, which put out a 1993 album on Geffen Records. But throughout the first half of the 1990s, Bono was in the closet, enduring a long struggle with the tabloids and the gay press. In a 1995 interview with Advocate editor in chief Judy Wieder, a 26-year-old Bono finally came out. Wieder's piece recounted the story of Bono's outing, first in the Star in 1990, then in a host of other tabloid articles. "My mom was completely freaked out," Bono said. "It was one tabloid story after another for the longest time. I was a fucking wreck. After that everybody got more paranoid, and [publicists, Cher, and Geffen Records] started sending me out on dates [with men]." All the while, Bono said, she had relationships with women, even surviving the death of a longtime girlfriend.

"I definitely feel that if k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, the Indigo Girls, and Janis Ian hadn't come out, I wouldn't be coming out now," Bono said. "However, maybe my being one more person doing it is going to make another person do it. It's like that silly hair commercial: Tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on."