Actress Meredith Baxter says coming out
gay left her feeling unburdened.
Baxter, who is best known for playing
Elyse Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties, came out during a
2009 Today Show appearance.
“I am a lesbian and it was a
later-in-life recognition,” she told Matt Lauer. “Some people
would say, well, you're living a lie and, you know, the truth is –
not at all. This has only been for the past seven years.”
Baxter, 67, came forward after Perez
Hilton published photos on his website of Baxter and then-girlfriend
Nancy Locke aboard an all-lesbian cruise. The pair married in
California last year.
“After coming out on national
television I felt unburdened, and that's the way I feel now,”
Baxter said in an Oprah:
Where Are They Now segment broadcast Sunday. “I'm not
worried about someone going, 'Hey we know about this.' I don't have
anything I'm trying to hide.”
Baxter wrote about her three failed
marriages to men and coming out in her 2011 memoir Untied.