I'm not sure. I feel like your first example is pretty vengeful - almost in a, "Ha! He's a homophobic dick, of course he's gay!" kind of way. Maybe that's why people find it newsworthy: they buy into that. Being publicly gay is still not completely accepted in Western society, specifically the American media side of things. So while I would say that it shouldn't be newsworthy, it still totally is. Whether or not that's a good thing, I'm not entirely sure of yet.
Well for the first example, part of it is that, but also it's the fact that if you are a policy creator or enforcer then your personal virtue gives a level of strength to those policies (say anti-gay policies like in Russia) and motivates people/citizens to follow you and have faith in your decisions. These policies are hurting people and are being upheld, to a degree, by the fact that people have faith you believe in them yourself. So, more so to protect the people being hurt by the policies and expose the hypocrisy in the legislature/enforcer and the true lack of support and morals behind those policies to shine a light on the reality of the situation and push people away from supporting it.