Tiger King star Carole Baskin has had two husbands, but says she could have just easily married a woman. The big cat rescuer says she identifies as bisexual, despite her relationships with men. “I have always considered myself to be bisexual, even thought I’ve never had a wife. I could just as easily have a wife as a husband as far as the way I feel about ‘us,'” she explained, referring to humans in general. Carole made the big announcement during a video interview with PinkNews.
The 59-year-old big cat lover continued, “I think we’re all one…I just don’t see us being different genders or different colors or different anything. It’s not a matter of what your sexual preferences are.” Carole has been married to husband Howard Baskin since 2004. Prior to that she was wed to millionaire first husband Don Lewis from 1991 through 2002. He mysteriously disappeared on August 19, 1997 and was declared legally dead five years later, even though his body has never been found.
Dancing with the Stars contestant — and everyone’s favorite Halloween costume this year — Carole says that she first became close to the LGBTQ community in the 1980s, through her fiance at the time. “I was engaged to a psychologist, and that was his entire field, dealing with the LGBT+ community. It was during the period when AIDS was just wreaking havoc around the world, and people were losing their loved ones, and so I became very close to people in that community then.”
Carole also explained that while growing up, she wasn’t into typical girly things like playing with dolls and lacked maternal instincts. She said that she was “always very male-oriented in the things I did,” explaining that she was “probably born into the wrong body” as she was such a “tomboy.” “I never had any mothering instincts or anything. I never played with dolls. And so I always thought that there was something off there, that I couldn’t quite put my finger on,” Carole detailed.
While the Tiger King himself Joe Exotic is and out and proud gay man, Carole had harsh words for her nemesis. “This man is just a deviant in how he treats animal life and human life and that its all about him. It doesn’t have anything to do with the communities he may associate himself with. I think he’s an embarrassment to the human community,” she told PinkNews. The former zoo owner is serving 22 years in a federal prison after he was found guilty in 2018 on two counts of hiring a hitman to murder Carole, as well as violating the Endangered Species Act for cruelly killing five of his zoo’s tigers and shipping others for sale across state lines.