Sophia Bush comes out as queer, confirms relationship with Ashlyn Harris

Actor Sophia Bush got here out as queer in an emotional essay in Glamour and confirmed she’s in a relationship with retired U.S. Girls’s Nationwide Workforce soccer participant Ashlyn Harris. 

“I kind of hate the notion of getting to return out in 2024,” Bush wrote in a canopy story for the style journal printed Thursday. “However I’m deeply conscious that we’re having this dialog in a yr after we’re seeing essentially the most aggressive assaults on the LGBTQIA+ neighborhood in fashionable historical past.” 

Bush famous that there have been greater than 500 anti-LGBTQ payments proposed in state legislatures final yr and mentioned this motivated her to “give the act of popping out the respect and honor it deserves.” 

“I’ve skilled a lot security, respect, and love within the queer neighborhood, as an ally all of my life, that, as I got here into myself, I already felt it was my house,” she wrote. “I believe I’ve all the time recognized that my sexuality exists on a spectrum. Proper now I believe the phrase that finest defines it’s queer. I can’t say it with out smiling, truly. And that feels fairly nice.”

The “One Tree Hill” star filed for divorce from entrepreneur Grant Hughes in August. Folks journal first reported in October that Bush and Harris have been courting, however neither confirmed nor commented on the report. The pair later attended an Oscar’s viewing celebration collectively in March. 

Within the essay, Bush addressed on-line rumors that her relationship with Harris started earlier than Harris had formally divorced from fellow soccer star Ali Krieger, in September. 

“Everybody that issues to me is aware of what’s true and what isn’t,” Bush wrote. “However even nonetheless there’s part of me that’s a ferocious defender, who desires to right the report piece by piece. However my higher self, together with her earned persistence, has to sit down again and ask, What’s the f——- level? For who? For web trolls? No, thanks. I’ll spend my valuable time doing issues I like as an alternative.”

Bush mentioned that after information about her and Harris grew to become public, her mother advised her {that a} good friend referred to as and mentioned, “Effectively, this could’t be true. I imply, your daughter isn’t homosexual.” 

“My mother felt that it was apparent, from the way in which her good friend emphasised the phrase, that she meant it judgmentally,” Bush wrote. “And you already know what my mother mentioned? ‘Oh honey, I believe she’s fairly homosexual. And she or he’s completely satisfied.’”

Bush wrote that she felt like she was carrying a weighted vest that she might lastly put down. 

“I lastly really feel like I can breathe,” Bush wrote. “I turned 41 final summer season, amid all of this, and I heard the phrases I used to be saying to my finest good friend as they got here out of my mouth. ‘I really feel like that is my first birthday,’ I advised her. This yr was my very first birthday.”

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