Since Tim Cook is leaving Apple, it’s now time for him to really show up for us

When Tim Cook was named to replace the legendary Steve Jobs as Apple’s CEO in August 2011, it was a wild and electric moment, not just for the tech world but for our community.

His sexuality was already being widely whispered about in corporate circles, with reports circulating as early as 2011 that Cook was gay, though he was working to keep his personal life private. In fact, in April of 2011, our sister outlet, Out Magazine, named him as one of the most influential LGBTQ+ people in America.

He wouldn’t officially come out until three years later. But for gay men of a certain age, like myself, who toiled in corporate America for 30 years, the moment was astonishing.

Related: Tim Cook: Being Gay Has Helped Me Lead Apple

To have a gay man running one of the most powerful companies on earth, well, that was earth-shattering. By the time Cook came out, I was out at my job for only a few years, and trust me when I tell you that among the C-levels of all the companies I worked for, dominated by men, there were no gay men, or there weren’t publicly.

I remember all the possibilities someone like me projected onto Cook’s ascension. Here, finally, was proof that a queer person could sit at the very top of the world.

Cook became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to publicly come out as gay, doing so in a 2014 Bloomberg essay that was measured, proud, and deliberately purposeful. Those words really describe Cook, at least the one we understood through a small - and purposeful small - lens.

He said he had never denied his sexuality, but had never publicly acknowledged it either, and that he hoped the acknowledgment could help others. For a moment, it felt like the dam had broken. Right or wrong, there were really high expectations for Cook from the queer community. I suppose we imagined he would be a lightning bolt for us, causing a thunderous revolution.

By the numbers, Cook delivered brilliantly as a CEO. In his first decade, from 2011 to 2020, Cook doubled Apple’s revenue and profit, growing the company’s market value from $348 billion to almost $2 trillion. They were the first company to reach a trillion-dollar valuation. Regardless of what you might think, a CEO’s primary obligation is to shareholders and investors, and by that measure, Cook performed spectacularly.

But the community he belonged to was hungry for more than a rising stock price and hoarding cash. We wanted a champion.

To be fair, Cook did some meaningful things. In 2013, he spoke at the United Nations in favor of gay rights, declaring that “now is the time to write these basic principles of human dignity into the book of law.” In 2014 and 2015, he led some Apple employees in San Francisco’s annual gay pride march.

Among other things, he supported the Encircle nonprofit for LGBTQ+ youth, helping the organization surpass its $8 million fundraising goal to build safe spaces for queer young people across the American West. He donated to Project One America, an LGBTQ+ equality campaign in Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi. Over the years, he donated millions of dollars in support of various human rights issues.

These are not nothing. These are real. And these are enormously helpful and appreciated, so let’s just be honest about that. I don’t want to give the impression that Cook has ignored our community. He hasn’t. But…

His help seemed scattered, quiet, and carefully rationed. Clearly, I’m not privy to all he did, so I’m hopefully certain there was much more. However, his public statements were few, his personal life remained tightly sealed, and after the initial buzz of his 2014 coming-out faded, his commentary on gay issues and rights became, well, somewhat quiet.

For those of us who looked to Cook as a symbol of what was possible, the silence was a simmering disappointment. We expected more. We got considerably less.

And then came Donald Trump, and at least for me, the bottom came out for Cook.

He donated $1 million to Trump’s 2025 inauguration, attended his Mar-a-Lago dinner ahead of the second term, and successfully lobbied for tariff carve-outs for Trump’s sporadic - and now illegal - tariff tantrums.

Bad enough. But then came the Oval Office moment that turned our stomachs. Cook stood beside President Trump and unveiled a glass engraving mounted on a 24-karat gold base. It was so over-the-top for someone low-key like Cook, and it made Cook look like a sycophantic sleazeball.

Related: Tim Cook chooses riches over justice and coddles the evil ways of dictator Trump

Look, I understand the business logic. Apple’s supply chain snakes across the globe, and in return for the gesture and a pledge of $600 billion in U.S. manufacturing investment, the company secured an exemption from Trump’s sweeping new semiconductor tariffs. A CEO protects their company. I get it.

But Trump is relentlessly assaulting our community, more so than any president in modern history, with his administration aggressively targeting transgender Americans, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ rights more broadly.

And when Cook was asked about all of it, he described himself as “not political,” telling Good Morning America’s Michael Strahan, “I interact on policy, not politics. I’m kind of straight down the middle.”

Straight down the middle? Sorry, that doesn’t fly with anyone who values human rights.

Now, Cook will step down as CEO effective September 2026, with his successor John Ternus, a hardware engineer who has been with Apple for 25 years, taking the reins. Cook will remain as executive board chairman.

So here is what I, and many of us, hope. Once Cook passes the torch to Ternus, perhaps he will finally step out from behind the Apple glass and be the figure we always needed him to be. More open about his life. More vocal about our struggles. And more than anything, a source of real financial and moral support for a community that has long waited for him to show up fully.

Queer media is one example of where help is needed. They have been gutted. Advertisers, terrified of being seen as pro-DEI, have fled. Organizations that serve our community, here and around the world, are fighting for survival at the very moment when our rights are under the most sustained assault in decades.

Cook is leaving one of the most powerful jobs in the world with a personal fortune that could easily fund entire movements for decades. If he wants to redeem years of careful silence. And yes, redeem himself for blatantly kissing the derriere of a man who has treated our community as trash to be discarded, his retirement offers the chance to finally be the superstar we have always longed for him to be.

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