Ricky Martin tells UN conference he wishes he could come out again
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}March 12, 2012: Ricky Martin appears at the curtain call after his first performance in the new Broadway production of "Evita", in New York. (AP)
Latin superstar Ricky Martin is telling a U.N. conference on homophobia that he wishes he could come out again so he could tell people struggling with their identities that "it's just beautiful -- you find love."
Martin said Tuesday that "for many years, I lived in fear ... because I was hating myself because I grew up listening to a very crooked concept: `You're gay. You belong in hell."'
Martin, who is currently starring on Broadway in "Evita," said it was amazing to be at the United Nations surrounded by people "fighting for one cause -- equality and love and social justice."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He praised U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who got a standing ovation after telling the conference that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people -- the LGBTs -- "are entitled to the same rights as everyone else."
"They, too, are born free and equal," Ban said. "I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them in their struggle for human rights."
The secretary-general said he is "pained" that more than 76 countries still criminalize homosexuality.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I am here to again denounce violence and demand action for true equality," he said.
While the past decade has seen far-reaching reforms in Europe, the Americas and a number of African and Asian countries, Ban said, in a number of countries -- including Ukraine -- draft laws have been proposed that would criminalize public discussion of homosexuality.
South African singing star Yvonne Chaka Chaka, a human rights activist and goodwill ambassador for the U.N. children's fund who is married and has four children, said "I think straight people should respect other people because, for me, I don't think there's anything crooked about LGBT."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Their only "crime," she said, "is because they love the same gender."
Chaka said her husband is a prince who is allowed to have three or four wives "but I would not let him."
I will never allow him to have a second wife, and he knows that. That is why he chose me," she said. "If he wants to, goodbye."