Born 4th. March 1969, Los Angeles, California, USA, she is a US one-time pop singer, lesbian activist, and writer.

Her fame rests mainly on being the lesbian daughter of the singing duo Sonny and Cher Bono. Her mother's original name was Cherilyn Sarkesian La Peir, born in El Centro, California, and was half Cherokee and half Armenian. In 1964 she sang I Love You Ringo under the name Bonnie Jo Mason, but she continued to work as Cherilyn until marrying Salvatore Phillip Bono.

Chastity Bono's parents divorced when she was four. She was tomboyish when young, and when she was 13 she realised that she was a lesbian but kept it to herself.

She and Cher moved to New York and lived together in a flat in Greenwich Village.

Between he junior and senior years of high school she accidentally met a gay parade and she joined it down to Washington Square.

She came out to her father when she was 17, and he gave her his support. However, he had been elected as a Republican congressman to the House of Representatives in 1994 and their politics were sometimes at odds. He had also supported and sponsored the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act which aimed to ban homosexual marriages.

She had known that coming out to her father would bring them closer, but she feared that coming out to her mother would drive them apart and she delayed telling her. In fact it was Sonny who told Cher, possibly to be spiteful. Cher was furious as she seemed to be the last to know. Arguments followed and it was some time before the rift was healed.

When Chastity Bono was 20 in 1990 she was outed by the tabloid newspaper, the Star, but publicly she denied that she was gay.

In 1993 Chastity Bono released an album with her band Ceremony, but it was not successful and the band was dropped from its record label.

Chastity Bono proclaimed her lesbianism publicly on the front cover of The Advocate in April 1995. She became a campaigner for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination (GLAAD), and she was adopted as a spokesperson. She wrote for the leading US gay magazine The Advocate, and was engaged by various US organisations as a consultant on lesbian and gay issues. She also gave talks around the US, Canada, and elsewhere on the implications of coming out.

In 1994 she appeared as a counsellor in the episode of the US television series Ellen, starring Ellen DeGeneres, in which Ellen's coming out was discussed.

Sonny Bono died of a skiing accident in 1998.

In 1999 her book Family Outing was published and she went on a promotion tour which included the UK. She appeared for a book signing at Borders in London on 30th. June, and she was interviewed by Rhona Cameron on Gaytime TV on BBC2 television on 13th. July.

Credit: myweb.lsbu.ac.uk