Five notable bisexuals

First celebrated in 1999, Celebrate Bisexuality Day aims to further bisexuals’ rights, which some see as a cause that garners much less attention than the rights of gays and lesbians.

Bisexuals themselves are much less visible than openly gay and lesbian stars. Here are five celebrities who have claimed to be bi or are suspected of swinging both ways.

Billie Joe Armstrong

Punk rock has always been a mecca for kids who feel disenfranchised by mainstream culturem and in the 1990s, Green Day brat Billie Joe Armstrong was the poster child for the subversive.

In a 1995 interview with The Advocate, Armstrong came out as bisexual, although he says he never actually engaged in same-sex carnality.

“I think I’ve always been bisexual,” Armstrong said. “I mean, it’s something that I’ve always been interested in. I think everybody kind of fantasizes about the same sex. I think people are born bisexual, and it’s just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of ‘Oh, I can’t.’ They say it’s taboo. It’s ingrained in our heads that it’s bad, when it’s not bad at all. It’s a very beautiful thing.”

Coincidentally, Armstrong grew up in a suburb of Berkeley, California, the first city to officially declare Sept 23 as Bisexual Pride, in 2012.

Anna Paquin

The partially Canadian Oscar-winner and star of True Blood came out in 2010 in a public service announcement supporting the Give a Damn campaign for equal rights. Paquin’s revelation flooded wegiveadamn.org with so many visitors that the website crashed. Paquin is now married to co-star Stephen Moyer and recently gave birth to twins.

In 2012, Paquin told US Weekly that her sexuality is not a choice.

“My sexuality is not made up, for a bisexual, it’s not about gender. That’s not the deciding factor to who they’re attracted to,” the gap-toothed beauty said.

Colin Campbell

Canadian artist Colin Campbell identifies not only as bisexual, but as bigender. The pioneering video artist has embodied several alter egos over the course of his career, including “the woman from Malibu” and “the Art Star.”

Campbell died in 2001, and a retrospective of his work ran in Oakville in 2009.

Anne Frank

Many gay, lesbian and bisexual people are surprised to learn that within the legendary diary of Anne Frank is a passage about how she longs to touch the breasts of a friend. There is evidence that Frank had a boyfriend, but the following passage cannot be ignored:

“Thursday, 6 January 1944: Once when I was spending the night at Jacque’s, I could no longer restrain my curiosity about her body, which she’d always hidden from me and which I’d never seen. I asked her whether, as proof of our friendship, we could touch each other’s breasts. Jacque refused. I also had a terrible desire to kiss her, which I did. Every time I see a female nude, such as the Venus in my art history book, I go into ecstasy. Sometimes I find them so exquisite I have to struggle to hold back my tears. If only I had a girlfriend!”

While this may be evidence only of a teenager’s curiosity, this passage incensed one Michigan mother so much that she lobbied to have the book banned from her seventh grader’s class.

Cary Grant

Considered one of the greatest actors of all time, there continues to be much speculation about Grant’s sexuality years after his death.

Although he was married five times (to women) a 2000 biography of Cole Porter claims Grant frequented a house of male prostitution in Harlem.

Many claim Grant had a torrid, 12-year love affair with actor Randolph Scott and another with costume designer Jack Kelly.

Grant’s own daughter denies these claims, and when Chevy Chase once joked about Grant’s sexuality on television, Grant filed a lawsuit.

Whatever the truth is, his third wife, Betsy Drake, claims they “fucked liked rabbits,” as a true bisexual would.