In an announcement that the media found basically mundane, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, announced that he is gay.

The announcement made him the first openly gay CEO of a fortune 500 company. The news hardly made a ripple in the stock market, where the stock price for Apple was down only 0.6 percent. This kind of reaction says something about how far the country has come in its attitudes about people's sexual identities.

More than half of all LGBT workers hide their orientation at work, according to a recent Human Rights Campaign survey. In fact, it is still legal in 29 states to fire workers for being gay, as CNN noted.

Cook mentioned that as part of the reason he broke his silence:

"I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences," Cook wrote. "Not everyone is so lucky."