Steve Buscemi Gay? Rumors Surface After His Reddit AMA

Steve Buscemi is the latest celebrity to get his name thrown into the old “gay or straight” meat grinder that the internet likes to run any time there is even the remotest question regarding a celebrity’s sexuality.

Some might think Buscemi brought this one on himself, but some rumor-mongering sites are speculating as a result of his involvement in the production of Check It, a new documentary that he’s co-producing, which centers on a gay street gang “of 14 22-year-olds struggling to survive in the city with the highest LGBT hate crime rate in the nation,” he explains in the introduction of his Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything).

Buscemi’s Q&A hit the top of the front page on Monday, and while he did share a number of interesting facts about his career, his focus was clearly on the film.

Most of the rumors about whether Steve Buscemi is gay stem from this answer to a question as to what inspired him to do the film and if he’d spent much time with the subjects of the film.

“I did not (unfortunately) spend plenty of time with the kids in the film. But I do hope to meet them. Right now, the film is still being worked on, and that’s why I’m doing this campaign. But I will say about these kids, you know, that I’ve seen in the documentary – they have tremendous heart, and tremendous courage, and I think they’re certainly – they have a rough go of it, you know. Every day. And I find their struggle really moving, and inspiring…. Well, you know, when I was their age, and growing up in the town that i grew up in, in the time that i grew up in, it was…it was… if you were gay, you could not let anybody know that. So to see these kids just really be who they are, and a lot of them are flamboyantly so, it kind of amazes me that there’s – even in this day and age, that I think is a lot more tolerant than when I grew up – there’s still a lot of hate out there, and especially where they live, it’s really dangerous. It’s quite dangerous for them to be who they are. And so they’ve banded together out of necessity- a lot of them come from broken homes – so they’ve created their own family with each other, so they really help and support each other, and I really admire that…. I really… uh, admire that they struggle every day to make a life for themselves.”

Buscemi also “outed” himself as a liberal after years of speculation considering his fireman roots. He professed to be an admirer of John Oliver, Larry Wilmore, and Jon Stewart.

But in all of that, there is no admission that Steve Buscemi is gay, and according to the Los Angeles Times, he’s been married to the same woman since 1987. (They have one son, born in 1990.)

Of course, given recent studies that show there are two million “mixed-orientation” marriages in the U.S. alone, this fact probably won’t end the debate.

Do you think Steve Buscemi is gay, or are you as tired of the gay rumors that crop up any time a celebrity associates his or her name with the LGBT community as I am? Sound off in the comments section.