Panic! at the Disco singer Brendon Urie has come out as pansexual.
The musician revealed the news in a Paper magazine interview published today. “Yeah I guess you could qualify me as pansexual because I really don’t care,” Urie shared. “If a person is great, then a person is great. I just like good people, if your heart’s in the right place. I’m definitely attracted to men. It’s just people that I am attracted to.”
Urie has been married to a woman named Sarah Orzechowski for the last five years, but said that doesn’t preclude him from finding other people — of any gender or orientation — attractive. “I’m married to a woman and I’m very much in love with her but I’m not opposed to a man because to me, I like a person.”
According to the frontman, the process of coming to terms with his sexuality was never “weird,” though he knew others around him didn’t necessarily feel the same way. “I know that it made a few people uncomfortable, when somebody gets uncomfortable about me doing what I used to call ‘stage gay.’ It kind of presses me to want to do it more,” he told Paper.
Throughout his career with the Las Vegas-based Panic! at the Disco, Urie has alluded to his fluid sexuality in interviews as well as with the band’s own music. Speaking to the Huffington Post in 2013, he noted that although he identified as straight at the time, he’d also experimented with both homosexuality and bisexuality.
Urie’s revelation today follows his massive $1 million donation last week to GLSEN, an education organization whose mission is to create safe and inclusive schools all across America. The money will help students establish and fund their own GSAs (Gender & Sexuality/Gay-Straight Alliances).
“For years my fans have inspired me with their determination and creativity as they have created a safe and inclusive community,” Urie said in a statement. “I felt the time had come for me to join them boldly, to bring that energy and power to bear on the huge challenges facing our whole society.”
“Some of the most inspiring leaders out there right now have come from GSAs,” he added. “Working firsthand with GLSEN, student leaders everywhere, and all my fans, I want to make sure that every one of our future leaders out there has the support they need to form their own GSA and begin their work to make a better world.”
Panic! at the Disco celebrated the release of their latest album, Pray for the Wicked, last month.
