Revealing this aspect of a private life that the actor has chosen to keep private is entirely his decision to make, and nobody should force him to make it, or make it for him. That alone ends the story, in ethics terms. Most important of all, John Travolta doesn’t want the public to know/believe/think that he’s gay. In his industry, for all its liberal and progressive grandstanding, the perceived sexuality of leading men does matter, because it is believed that it affects the bottom line. To say it shouldn’t, however, is not to prove that it doesn’t.

Should it matter if John Travolta is gay? It shouldn’t, no.