HIV Activist Miley Cyrus Comes Out as Bisexual, Gender Fluid

While some may think of Miley Cyrus as the former Disney star who twerked with Robin Thicke, there is much more to the 22-year-old. Cyrus sat down with Paper magazine to discuss her veganism, her LGBT-supportive foundation, and her own refusal to abide by society's narrow confines of gender and sexuality.

Cyrus said she's had relationships with women just as serious as the opposite-sex ones the media covered breathlessly (with Patrick Schwarzenegger and Liam Hemsworth, for example).

"I am literally open to every single thing that is consenting and doesn't involve an animal and everyone is of age," Cyrus said. "Everything that's legal, I'm down with. Yo, I'm down with any adult — anyone over the age of 18 who is down to love me. I don't relate to being boy or girl, and I don't have to have my partner relate to boy or girl."

At 14, in the midst of her Hannah Montana fame, Cyrus knew she was attracted to women. She told her mother — who eventually embraced the news — how she felt.

"I remember telling her I admire women in a different way. And she asked me what that meant. And I said, I love them. I love them like I love boys," she says.

Cyrus, who had a homeless young man accept her Video Music Award last year, is the founder of the Happy Hippie Foundation, a nonprofit group that raises money for homeless and LGBT youth and people living with HIV. The Happy Hippie Foundation is creating new programs for transgender women living with HIV, one of only a handful of organizations reaching out to the hard hit community. (Earlier this year Tweets went out that read #HappyHippies support you no matter what your gender OR HIV status.)

Cyrus said she was partly inspired to start the organization following the death of Leelah Alcorn, a trans teen who ended her life last year after enduring "conversion therapy" at the hands of a self-proclaimed Christian therapist. 

"We can't keep noticing these kids too late," Cyrus said.