Tim Cook to Colbert: it was my responsibility to come out

While he valued his privacy, Cook realized the role he could play by being open about his sexuality

It's been almost a year since Apple CEO Tim Cook made the big announcement: he is a  gay man.

Since then Apple has been doing better than ever, Cook is still a well respect leader and his sexuality rarely even seems to come up. As it should be, since that has nothing to do with his ability as a leader.

As someone who is gay, though, Cook is still someone who serves as a role model for others like him. And that, he said while appearing on the Late Show with Steven Colbert on Tuesday (I will admit that I just wrote "Colbert Report" before realizing my mistake, something I assume I will be doing for a long while) is the reason he decided to come out in the first place.

After spending the beginning of the interview discussing the new iPhone, and Cook's relationship to Steve Jobs, Colbert decided to take a more serious tone (as Joe Biden knows he is likely to do) and asked Cook about what spurred him to make his private life so well known.

“Was that an upgrade or just a feature that had not been turned on?” Colbert joked, making Cook laugh hard. (Who can resist a good iPhone joke, after all?)

Cook answered that he has two pictures on his desk: Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, which continuously spur him to ask himself what he was doing for the good of mankind.

“It became so clear to me that kids were getting bullied in schools, kids were getting basically discriminated against, kids were even being disclaimed by their own parents, and that I needed to do something,” Cook said.

“Where I valued my privacy significantly, I felt that I was valuing it too far above what I could do with other people, so I wanted to tell everyone my truth.”

Most people already knew, Cook admitted, so it wasn't shocking for those close to him, before he made his own iPhone joke:

“It was like discovering something on your iPhone it’s always done but you didn’t quite know it.”

Cook officially came out last year in an essay for Bloomberg Businessweek, writing, “While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now."

“So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.”

Coming out is always a dicey prospect considering that people like Kim Davis still exist, but the tech world is a pretty progressive place, and one that is seemingly very open to the LGBT community. Look at how so many of them reacted to the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling this summer.

Apple has long been at the forefront of gay rights, including supporting gay marriage in California, supporting a workplace equality bill in congress, and the company notably shot down the Arizona legislature for trying to pass a bill that would have essentially legalized segregation against the gay community.

This is the latest example of Colbert, whose show is only a week old, getting some of the biggest names in tech to come on and espouse their ideas.

He first got Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, a.k.a. the real life Iron Man, to say, and I am not kidding, that he wants to drop a nuclear bomb on Mars. (Uh, let's please not do that). Then he challenged Uber CEO Travis Kalanick on how his policies are affecting other cab drivers, as well as the company's own drivers (though, it should be said, that it sounds like the audience was much harder on him than Colbert was.) 

These kinds of guests have already made the show appointment viewing for me, and I'm looking forward to see what other tech giants he can wrangle to come on.

You can see the video of Colbert's interview with Cook below: