Is Glee’s Darren Criss gay, or straight?

Hottie Darren Criss plays an openly gay and self-assured character on the beloved show Glee, but he’s been mostly coy about his personal sexuality in interviews. Chris Colfer, who won an Emmy for playing the struggling-to-find-his-place gay character Kurt on thew show, is gay in real life, and Darren understands why many people are curious about his own sexual orientation.

Although he openly talked about his straightness last November in Vanity Fair, Criss has again come “out” as straight in Out Magazine.

“I think it’s more empowering to everybody, including myself, if I’m articulate about identifying myself as a straight male playing a gay character. Ultimately, that’s more powerful for both communities.”

In VF, he said:

It’s a subject that’s very near and dear to my heart, simply because I grew up in such an open community—doing theater in San Francisco. I mean, it doesn’t get much, stereotypically, “gayer.” I was inadvertently raised in the “gay community.” I had straight parents, but I spent massive amounts of time at a very early age with gay, theater-hopeful thirty-somethings. And those were the people I spent time with early on, so my whole perception of “sexuality” just wasn’t there. It just…was. It even got to the point where, later in life… I had all the components in place. I was, well, not super effeminate, but I was into girly things—I liked musical theater, all the stereotypical things. I had to come out and say, well, I’m sorry, but I think I’m straight. And people were like, say it ain’t so! And I would say, “It’s been a secret too long, but I’m actually a straight male.”