Anderson Cooper thanks fans for support on Twitter

Anderson Cooper took to Twitter on Tuesday to thank his fans for their support since he came out as gay in an e-mail to blogger Andrew Sullivan, the Daily Beast reported.

The tweet is his first public statement since the e-mail that circulated the news around the Internet. 

Cooper is the most recent in a string of high-profile figures to come out of the closet, including Jim Parsons, Queen Latifah, and the Food Network's Anne Burrell.

"I appreciate all the nice tweets," wrote Cooper on the social media network from Botswana. 

Though the 45-year-old CNN anchor has been "notoriously private about his sexuality," as the Huffington Post pointed out, he felt the need to come out of the closet to dismiss the idea that he is uncomfortable with his sexuality, as he wrote in his e-mail. 

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"The fact is, I'm gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud," Cooper wrote to the Daily Beast's Sullivan in an e-mail he allowed to be published. "It’s become clear to me that by remaining silent on certain aspects of my personal life for so long, I have given some the mistaken impression that I am trying to hide something – something that makes me uncomfortable, ashamed or even afraid. This is distressing because it is simply not true."  

Many bloggers and columnists also rallied in support of Cooper's decision to come out. 

"What I like better than Cooper's admission, or the good reasons he summarizes for making such an admission, is his insistence that even under these circumstances he has a right to a private life, and he intends to invoke those rights," wrote Gregory Maguire, the author of "Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. 

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