Carole Baskin reveals she once had a ‘wife’ after coming out as bisexual – but it was strictly platonic

Carole Baskin Tiger King

Carole Baskin “once had a heterosexual wife”, the star has revealed after coming out as bisexual.

After coming out in an interview with PinkNews, the 59-year-old animal rights activist told TMZ that she had a “non-sexual wife” in the 1980s who was straight.

Baskin said that she respected the boundaries she and her wife drew up – they loved one another in a platonic way. Her wife took on more domestic duties, such as cooking and cleaning, and became secretary for Baskin’s real estate business.

However, the Tiger King star she clarified that it being the mid to late 1980s when they were together when marriage equality was very much a distant dream, they were not technically married.

The owner and operator of Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida, was previously married to Michael Murdock and Don Lewis before his disappearance and has since gotten remarried to Howard Baskin.

Baskin added that when it comes to partners, it’s more about “who a person is on the inside” and she “doesn’t have a preference” when it comes to someone’s physical characteristics.

Carole Baskin: ‘I have always considered myself to be bisexual.’

Carole Baskin come out as bisexual to PinkNews this week, explaining that she first felt that she was part of the LGBT+ community in the 1980s.

“I was engaged to a psychologist,” she described, “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.

“But it was during the ’80s that I discovered that through dealing with the LGBT+ community that I [realised] I had just as equal feelings for women as I did for men.”

She added: “I have always considered myself to be bisexual.

“As far as the way I feel about us, I think we are all one and I just don’t see us as being different genders or different colours or anything.”