Juan Gabriel, who never denied gay rumors, dies of heart attack
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Mourners flocked to his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles and around a statue of him in Mexico City.
Gabriel never married, conceived four children via artificial insemination and refused to discuss his sexuality.
Hector Carrillo, a professor of sociology at Northwestern University, told The Los Angeles Times that coming out would have killed Gabriel's career.
When a reporter in 2002 asked him whether he's gay, Gabriel answered: "You don't ask about what can be seen."
Gay fans didn't question what they saw – glittery outfits and occasional eye makeup – and claimed Gabriel as their own.
"I think he made a deep cultural change not by talking about his sexuality but by living it out on stage," Alejandro Madrazo, a law professor in Mexico, told the Times.
