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The Outing of Marcia Cross
Sarah Warn, February 8, 2005

Marcia Cross at the 2005 SAG Awards
Marcia Cross at the 2005 Golden Globes
Cross with the cast of Desperate Housewives at the 2005 Golden Globes

It started with a single post on popular gay gossip forum Datalounge.com on February 1st, from an anonymous poster who signed their name simply "Your Friendly Spy at ABC":

All those who assumed it was one of the husbands that was going to come out of the closet on [ABC's Desperate Housewives] (as promised by creator Marc Cherry) are off-track. The gay character is actually going to be Bree’s son, the pot-smoking problem teen who was behind the wheel of the car that put Carlos’s mother into a coma earlier this season. Expect to see more of him next season when all will be revealed re his sexuality, with Bree of course worried that her overbearing nature is the cause of it.

In other Desperate Housewives news, another cast member is going to come out of the closet in real life with the help of an upcoming cover of The Advocate and a string of talk show appearances. Just in time for May sweeps. Yes, I do know which cast member (it’s the talk of the set thanks to the fact said cast member wants to give The Advocate the exclusive – the editor is a close friend of the star - before announcing it to the rest of the media and so the coming out process is as complicated as the plans for a war) but I will keep mom on who exactly it is other than to say that it won’t be much of a surprise to those on DL. Oh, and the gay cast member will also announce a relationship with the lead of another TV series.

The thread quickly became one of the more popular ones on the forum, as posters quickly identified Marcia Cross as the lesbian Housewives star based on a process of elimination (discarding those Housewives currently married, like Felicity Huffman), clues like the Spy's use of the word "mom" in the "I will keep mom on who exactly it is," (Cross plays Stepford mom Bree on Housewives) and the fact that Marcia Cross (who came to fame in the 1990s as Kimberly on Melrose Place) has been rumored to be a lesbian for years.

Then speculation turned to who Cross was in a relationship with, and further hints by the ABC Spy that the woman was a brunette and a lead on a WB series prompted speculation of women Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls), Lori Loughlin and Merrin Dungey (Summerland), and even 23-year-old Jessica Pare (Jack and Bobby)--with just as many posters arguing the WB clue was a red herring and it was really Sex and the City's Kristin Davis.

Meanwhile, blogs like QueerDay.com began linking to the thread later in the week, and by the weekend, it was the talk of the internet.

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