Demi Lovato has come out as pansexual. In a new interview with Joe Rogan, the 28-year-old popstar opened up about coming to terms with her sexuality and how she currently defines it.
Lovato has been transparent about her romantic interests for a few years now, dating back to a 2017 segment of her Simply Complicated documentary in which she admitted that she was interested in both men and women. “I am open to human connection,” she said at the time. “So whether that’s through a male or a female, it doesn’t matter to me,”
In 2020, she detailed what it was like to come out to her parents a few years back, and then she continued to speak about her sexuality in her Glamour cover story from earlier this month, saying that she’s “really queer”. “I know who I am and what I am, but I’m just waiting until a specific timeline to come out to the world as what I am,” she said.
Well, it seems like that time has come. During her recent appearance on the massively popular Joe Rogan Experience, Lovato once again spoke about the fluidity of her sexuality after Rogan asked her whether or not she ever wants to have children. “I used to. I think if anything I want to adopt,” she said.
“I was engaged to a man last year,” she coninuted, referring to her now-ex-fiancé Max Ehrich. “I totally thought I’d be married, maybe pregnant by now. And that’s not the case. I also don’t know if I’m going to end up with a guy, so I can’t really see myself maybe getting pregnant. I’m so fluid now — and a part of the reason why I am so fluid is because I was super closeted off.”
At that point, Rogan stopped to clarify whether she meant sexually fluid, in that she’s attracted to both men and women. “Yeah — anything really,” she said. Rogan asked if “pansexual” is how she’d define herself. “Yeah, pansexual,” she affirmed.
She then went on to describe another phrase that speaks to her sexual identity: the “alphabet mafia”, I.E. the LGBTQ community. She heard someone say the term once and instantly fell in love with it. “That’s it! That’s what I’m going with. I’m part of the alphabet mafia and proud,” she said.
After he got her rolling on this topic, Rogan also asked about the first time she realized that she was interested in non-men. In true 2000s kid form, she said it was after she saw the famous kiss scene between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair in 1999’s Cruel Intentions.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I like that,’” she recalled. “But I felt a lot of shame because growing up in Texas as a Christian that’s very frowned upon. Any attraction I had to a female at a young age, I shut it down before I even let myself process what I was feeling.”
It’s great that the former Disney child star is able to speak freely about these topics now because Lovato hasn’t had an easy time in the limelight. As she discussed in her new documentary, Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, the singer suffered a near-fatal overdose, numerous sexual assaults, and has long struggled with addiction and eating disorders.
Later this week, she’ll release a new album called Dancing With The Devil…The Art of Starting Over, her first album since 2017’s Tell Me You Love Me.
