COOPER WAS A GAY COVERBOY LONG BEFORE HE CAME OUT YESTERDAY.

One needn’t have had “gaydar” to know that Anderson Cooper was homosexual. That’s why the significance of the CNN anchor’s declaration yesterday – “I’m gay, always have been, always will be” – is not that he made it, but that he felt so empowered to do so.

In an email to Andrew Sullivan, a fellow homosexual who authors a blog for the Daily Beast, Cooper explained that he was reminded recently “that while as a society we are moving toward greater inclusion and equality for all people, the tide of history only advances when people make themselves fully visible.”

That’s the gay strategy – to “make themselves fully visible.” As Sullivan wrote on his blog, “The visibility of gay people is one of the core means for our equality.”

That’s why gay rights activists so often state that every one of us knows someone or another who is gay.

The implication is that homosexuals constitute a sizable minority; that they deserve to be full integrated into every area of society, from the military to the Boy Scouts; that they deserve to be accorded the very same rights as heterosexuals, from marriage to adoption of children.

But homosexuals are not nearly as sizable a minority as the unsuspecting American public has been misled to believe.

Sure, most of us know someone or another who is gay. But most of us also know someone or another who is Asian.

Asians constitute a mere 5 percent of the U.S. population, which most of us would not consider sizeable. And the homosexual population is not even half that of the Asian population.

That’s not the disinformation of one of the “pastors calling for the death of gay people,” as Sullivan decried, but the fact-based conclusion of Garance Franke-Ruta, a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine.

In an article published this past spring, Franke-Ruta, who is no conservative, no evangelical Christian, pointed to an April 2011 study by the Williams Institute, a gay and lesbian think tank at UCLA, which calculated that only 1.7 percent of Americans between 18 and 44 are homosexual.

Given that data, wrote Franke-Ruta, the size of the gay population has been “massively overestimated” by members of the American public. She points to a Gallup poll last year in which those surveyed figured that gays and lesbians made up more than 25 percent of theU.S.population.

That so many Americans mistakenly believe that the homosexual population is 15 times larger than it actually is shows how successful gay rights activists have been in portraying their constituency as a sizable minority.

And they have managed to do so because of their prominence in such highly visible professions as media, entertainment and politics.

Indeed, Cooper’s acknowledgement yesterday that he is gay “and proud” was preceded several months ago by a similar announcement by fellow CNN anchor Don Lemon. And it will surprise hardly anyone when and if a former CNN anchor, currently working for a rival network, follows the lead of Lemon and Cooper.

Meanwhile, a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly featured a cover story on “The New Art of Coming Out.” It celebrates “the new casual methods celebrities are using to reveal their sexuality publicly for the first time.”

That includes such Hollywood gays as Jim Parsons, a cast member on CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory,” Zachary Quinto, who appeared on NBC’s “Heroes,” before moving on to such movies as Star Trek, Matt Bomer, star of USA Network’s “White Collar,” Jesse Tyler, of ABC’s “Modern Family” and Jane Lynch, of  FOX’s “Glee.”

Then there’s the political world, where homosexuality is no longer the liability with voters it once was. Indeed, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which makes campaign contributions to homosexual candidates throughout the country, says there are more than 1,000 open gay elected officials serving at some level or another in government.

And the gay community has a very special relationship with the Obama administration, which, according to the Victory Fund, has appointed more than 250 gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals, and transgenders to full-time and advisor positions with the executive branch, “more than all know LGBT appointments of other presidential administrations combined.”

The success of homosexuals in infiltrating the media, Hollywood and politics explains why so many Americans have been duped into believing that every fourth person is gay or lesbian or (other).

It also explains how the tiny minority has managed to advance its ungodly agenda, over the objection of the majority of Americans who continue to believe that homosexuality is a sin.