Mel Gibson's Gay Brother Speaks Out

Andrew Gibson, the little-known gay sibling of controversial actor-director Mel, comes to the defense of his brother and disputes claims that he's homophobic, in a rare interview with The Sunday Timesof Australia

"I have never once heard anything antigay come out of his mouth," Andrew says of Mel, even defending his notorious interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais. In the piece, published in 1991, Mel reportedly said of gay people, "They take it up the ass ... this is only for taking a shit." He was upset at any suggestion he could be mistaken for gay. "With this look, who's going to think I'm gay? I don't lend myself to that type of confusion. Do I look like a homosexual? Do I talk like them? Do I move like them?"

Andrew champions Mel's statements in the 20-year-old interview, saying, "He's a straight man and he was illustrating that fact. In the same way a gay man wouldn't want to have sex with a woman."

Andrew, who is 43 and was adopted by the Gibsons, says coming out to his family when he was 22 was one of his most terrifying things he ever did. "When I told my dad he cried and blamed himself he felt he had done something wrong," he says. "I was at a family dinner at Aria restaurant when I told Mel. He just said, 'It's not my choice, but I love you and you're my brother.'"

Andrew reveals that after he came out to the Gibsons he deliberately estranged himself from them for a decade, though he saw them periodically at family functions. "I distanced myself and they didn't come after me," he recalls. "It was a very difficult time. They didn't like my choice of boyfriends -- they wanted me to go out with a Country Road queen and I like strong, dangerous men."

Andrew says the entire Gibson family refuses to believe the charges that Mel abused ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva or accept the authenticity of the alleged taped conversations between the two. "When I heard them I just thought, That isn't Mel," he says. "He has never said anything abusive, aggressive or racist in his life. I just had to turn the TV off and turn it to the wall for two weeks so I didn't have to listen. The rest of the family did the same."