Rumors have gone around for years that Anderson Cooper was gay. Anderson always refused to talk publicly about his sexuality.

Anderson Cooper came out. "The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn't be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud," he wrote in an email to The Daily Beast reporter Andrew Sullivan.

No one is really surprised that Anderson is gay. It was something that was pretty much known but not talked about. Anderson as a reporter tended to want people to focus on the things and people he was reporting about and not his sexuality.

Comments and reports from those who know Cooper suggest that the stigma of hiding in the closet finally outweighed the benefits of having a veil of privacy while working as a nonpartisan journalist in a time when gay advocacy has become a mainstream topic of debate.

I think it is nice that Anderson has finally come out into the public with the fact that he is gay. A good example of a reporter that is a member of the lgbtq community and is still able to have personal privacy would be Rachel Maddow. I believe that Anderson can still have his personal privacy while being a totally out of the closet member of the LGBTQ community. Stand up and be proud Anderson. You are a role model to many young people out there. You can be a wonderful influence to many young gay men out there just like Rachel Maddow is to many lesbian girls.

The US Supreme Court upholds US President Barack Obama's health care law. Republican leaders vow to repeal and replace it. Obama says it is about the American people, not about politics. So what does the decision mean for Americans and for the US presidential election?

The decision means that two years after Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - which aims to insure 32 million additional people and prevent coverage from being refused because of medical history - its key tenet thinly survived at the hands of a chief justice whose nomination Obama opposed when he was a senator.

"Today the Supreme Court ... upheld the principle that people who can afford health insurance should take the responsibility to buy health insurance," Obama said after the ruling.

Taking aim at Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is running against Obama for the presidency, and says he will repeal the law if he wins, Obama pointed out that his Republican opponent had supported the same mandate when he reformed healthcare in his state.

"We can't refight the political battles of the past two years," Obama said of the virulent protests against the law that erupted in many states.

"I'm as confident as ever that when we look back five years from now, 10 years from now or 20 years from now, we'll be better off because we had the courage to pass this law."

Although the US is the world's largest economy, it is the only industrialised democracy that does not provide health care coverage to all its citizens.