Meredith Baxter, best known as Family Ties matriarch Elyse Keaton, came out on this morning’s Today Show, telling Matt Lauer, “I want to say I’m a lesbian.” Baxter, a thrice-married mother of five, has been secretly dating women for 7 years, but decided to share her story "in my own words" after the National Enquirer reported that she took a gay cruise and Perez Hilton posted a photo of her with her girlfriend of 4 years. “This is a political act, even though that’s not what it feels like to me,” she says of coming out publicly.
(More Meredith Baxter stories.)