I’m currently living at my mother‘s house, waiting for my work permit to come through so that I can start my first real job, teaching in England. Suffice it to say, I suddenly have a lot of free time.  I’ve been watching my way through Six Feet Under, a show which aired before I had either the emotional capacity to enjoy a program about a funeral home or HBO, which means frequent trips to our local movie rental for the next few discs.  As people who work slow-moving jobs in small towns are wont to do, the gray ponytailed man at Video Exchange has struck up a bit of a rapport with me, enough that he now feels comfortable commenting on my selections.

Christina Aguilera is staging a comeback.  Though a tremendously successful pop artist from the late 90s through the middle of the last decade, Aguilera has not released an album since 2006, and the music scene has acquired new stars in her absence. With her new disc, Bionic, coming out next month, she needs to do something big to recapture the public’s attention in a crowded market.

In her recently released video for the album’s first single, “Not Myself Tonight,” Aguilera uses a common tool of the female pop star who wants some extra press: getting sexy with another woman.

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I’ve written a lot recently about openly gay celebrities and the positive impacts they have on the movements for queer visibility and rights. But as we praise these brave individuals for the amazing strides they are making, we should not take this public discussion of sexual orientation by famous people for granted. Coming out publicly is not the automatic obligations of every LGBT person who happens to be well-known for some reason, and we have no right to demand that it should be.

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Last week, I wrote about Ricky Martin’s declaration of himself as “a fortunate homosexual man” on his official website, arguing that the coming out of a major figure, even one past the prime of his or her cultural relevance, is always a positive step for queer visibility and therefore queer rights. And yet, it is important not to overpraise those like Martin, who spend the peak of their career denying their homosexuality and then choose to come out once their greatest successes have already passed. Though we should not look down on or attack Martin, who is perfectly entitled to live his life as he chooses and had very good reasons for not being open about his sexuality earlier on, we must recognize that celebrities hiding their sexualities until a big reveal after their heyday is not the best way to move forward as a culture.

If you’ve been on the internet in the past several hours, you may be aware that Ricky Martin has officially come out as gay. As with many official coming outs of the past few years, the vast majority of the reaction has been made up of “duh” and “who cares? His career is already over,” with a decent amount of support and congratulations mixed in.

But dismissing this moment as insignificant or as a desperate ploy for relevance, or even as merely a personal achievement deserving of praise is missing the point. Ricky Martin came out because he felt he needed to, but why? Why is the coming out story so important for our culture to tell?