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Kalen Allen speaks in Lehi, Utah at the Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Summit, hosted by Encircle LGBT+ Family & Youth Resource Center
Issue 289 | DECEMBER 6, 2018
PHOTO: DYLAN WILKINSON
‘TheEllenShow’s Kalen Allen comes out as gay on the way to Utah for Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Conference BY JOHN HALES
YouTube and Ellen Show sensation (and now movie star) Kalen Allen signed an Instagram post on Saturday, “Sincerely yours, A proud gay black man from Kansas.” It was the first time Allen — named in the current issue of Hollywood Reporter as the industry’s “next big thing” — had publicly admitted he is gay. It was Utah’s LGBT youth who gave him the gumption him to do it. Allen, along with a handful of other LGBT or LGBT-allied celebrities, was a guest the Ignite LGBTQ+ Youth Summit, held Saturday at Adobe in Lehi. He was going to deliver a message of strength and
support, telling young people to be themselves, be in charge of their own story, be “authentic.” But, he told the audience at the event’s evening concert, “I cannot come on this stage and tell you to be authentic … if I cannot implement that into my own life.” That realization — the need to be both authentic and non-hypocritical — led the rising star to come out to the world just as he was en route to Utah. “I’ve contemplated, erased, and modified countless times what I am about to say. A truth that to most was never really a secret but I kept to myself due to fear,” Allen’s Instagram post, which he later posted also on Facebook, began.
“I can no longer live hypocritically,” he wrote. “I cannot preach of living life authentically and with no regrets when I do not adhere to my own advice.” Allen recently finished shooting for his role in an upcoming Seth Rogen film, In a Pickle. He’s had a pretty quick rise in popularity since being discovered only within the last year by Ellen DeGeneres for his “Kalen Reacts” YouTube videos. At such a tenuous point in a career, coming out —as anyone who has come out knows, regardless of celebrity — is scary stuff. “My heart beats fifty miles an hour at this very moment,” Allen wrote, after admitting that it had been fear that kept him from coming out before now:
