It's a "Different World" than where you come from. There are gay guys at Hillman College now, with muscular physiques and stuff

 

Link to the N*de Dudes

In 1987, daughter Denice (Lisa Bonet) of The Cosby Show spun off into college, "A Different World than where you come from."  It aired between Cosby and Cheers, so we had no choice but to watch.  But no problem: there was a lot of beefcake -- I especially liked Short Guy Ron (Darryl M. Bell) -- and some gay-subtext buddy bonding; the snobbish aristocrat Whitley stole the show; and the historically black Hillman College was interesting, "a different world" to many viewers.

It wasn't actually a comedy, at least not after the first season, when Denice left and Whitley was promoted to the focus character. The world became a cold, dark place, with episodes about s*xual assault, abusive relationships, AIDS, and a lot of racism. I especially disliked the constant victimization of math major Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison), who for some inexplicable reason starts dating Whitley, his polar opposite. Eventually we stopped watching. No point in getting depressed every Thursday night.

Nearly 30 years later, a new generation of first-years has arrived at Hillman for a rebooted Different World on Netflix. The focus character is Deborah Wayne, the daughter of now-divorced Dwayne and Whitley.  Hillman is her safety school, even though her dad is provost or something --- all of the old gang have stuck around, and now have important jobs at the college.

A homophobic Redditer complained, "Why do they have to make 99% of the characters on every tv show gay? It's like straight people don't even exist anymore."  So let's look for the gay characters.  The character and episode descriptions on Netflix and Wikipedia offer some clues.

There are seven main male characters.  Five are identified as heteros*xual:

Superstar basketball player Shaquille Johnson (Cornel Young IV, left), son of Short Guy Ron, chose Hillman against his dad's advice that he go to a Big 10 School and then turn pro. He starts dating Deborah.

Jalen (Elijah J. Roberts, left) is a "s*xy point guard" on the basketball team, who starts dating Deborah's friend Hazel.

Ghanian-Nigerian fashion design major
Koji (Chbuikem Ujike, left, underwear on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) is in college only to please his parents. He actualy wants to drop out and start his own fashion company.  Sounds promising, but Netflix says that his main pastime is "charming girls."

On RG Beefcake and Boyfriends: I went through the cast list, looking for n*de ptos of the male stars, and found Michael Vargas in an adult video.

More after the break

Jan-Michael Vincent: His n*de photo was the talk of West Hollywood

  

In the 1990s, you rarely saw male actors with their shirts off, and seeing them n*de was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So when this photo appeared in the gay magazine In Touch, it was a sensation.  Everybody bought a copy.  Everyone having brunch at the French Quarter was speculating on it.  The blurb told us that he was Jan-Michael Vincent in Buster and Billie (1974), but was it a gay movie?  Was it adult?  Was Jan-Michael Vincent one of us?

Some of us remembered him from Danger Island, a serial on the Banana Splits Saturday morning show (1968-69): An archaeologist, his daughter, and his assistant Link (Jan-Michael)) are shipwrecked on a desert island, where they befriend a stranded gay couple -- nearly overt, with lots of "we've been together for years" and "I won't leave you." 

And Big Wednesday (1978), with Jan-Michael, William Katt, and Gary Busey as surfer buddies.

But otherwise we came up blank. In the days before the internet, you couldn't look up an actor's works easily, and Jan-Michael's movie and tv appearances weren't of much gay interest.

The Mechanic (1972): Assassin Charles Bronson takes on his buddy's son (Jan-Michael) as an apprentice.

The World's Greatest Athlete (1973): Coach John Amos goes to Africa and recruits a Tarzan-type (Jan-Michael) to be a track and field star.  He falls in love with a girl named Jane. 

This p*nis and backside scene does not appear in the movie.  It must be an out-take.

Bite the Bullet (1975): A newspaper sponsors a 700-mile horse race across the Old West, and a group of misfits, including Gene Hackman, Candace Bergin, and Jan-Michael, compete.

Vigilante Force (1976): Um...Jan-Michael fights Kris Kristofferson while The Girl serves drinks?

More after the break

Jay R. Ferguson: The "obviously gay" teen idol of the 1990s moves on to play a 1960s sleazoid and the dad of two gay sons. With Jay and Carter c*ocks

 

Link to the Jay and Carter c*ocks

In the early 1990s, I was living in West Hollywood, and completely immersed in the LGBT community.  Media from the Straight World was suspect, if not homophobic than heteronormative, presenting men and women gazing at each other as the meaning of life.  So we chose our television programs carefully. On Monday nights, it was Fresh Prince of Bel Air (Carleton, sigh!), Blossom (Joey Lawrence, sigh!), and Designing Women (drag queen inspiration Suzanne Sugarbaker).  Certainly not Evening Shade (1990-94), with Burt Reynolds as a football coach (ugh!) in a small town (ugh!) in Arkansas (ugh!).

So when this photo of a shirtless, partying young man began appearing on all of the gay celebrity websites, we had no idea who he was. 

The photos kept coming.  We discovered that he was Jay R. Ferguson, who played Taylor, son of Burt Reynolds' character Wood.  Wood?  Really?

 Generally he was swishing it up, as in this iconic photo: apparently saying "Hey, Girl!" in a classic twink outfit, a short top. a bare midriff, and jeans with a club bulge.  Obviously gay!  

In the days when television was entirely heterosexist or homophobic,when even the most flamboyant actor stayed in the closet or saw his career fade away, seeing "one of us" was amazing.  

Unfortunately, the only way to conduct research was to buy a teen magazine -- and the Different Light bookstore on Santa Monica did not stock Tiger Beat.  

The show ended, the photo stream ended, and we forgot about the obviously-gay Jay.  .

For thirty years.

Until 2025, when The Real O'Neils (2016-2018) appeared on Hulu:  a conservative Irish-Catholic family having to deal with a number of problems: Dad wants a divorce; the daughter is an atheist; the oldest son (Matthew Shively) has an eating disorder; the youngest son (Noah Galvin) is gay.  

Yeah, I don't like "gay" being portrayed as a problem, either, but I like Noah Galvin.

And the hunky dad is played by...Jay R. Ferguson!

Three questions:

1. What has he been doing in the years since Evening Shade?

2. Any n*de photos?

3. Is he really gay?

1. What has he been doing?

Jay's first project after Evening Shade was Higher Learning (1995), which is not a teen sex comedy: Omar Epps (left) stars as a student experiencing racism at Columbia University.  But Jay did show us his backside (whilewith a girl).

And an under-the-covers e*rection.

Next  Jay moved into teen horror (Campfire Tales, 1997),  sex comedy (Pink as the Day She Was Born, 1997), teen angst (Blue Ridge Falls, 1999), and dark secrets (The In Crowd, 2000), before finding his niche in television:

Glory Days (2001-02).  Oddly, it's not about soldiers, it stars Eddie Cahill as a writer who dished the dirt on residents of his home town, and is surprised when he returns to find that they don't like him.  Jay plays the sheriff.

Judging Amy (2003-4), which is not about a judge named Amy.  A woman has problems with her mother, husband, and child.  Jay plays a doctor.

In a 2005 episode of Medium, Allison realizes that her troubled half-brother Michael (Ryan Hurst) has a "secret."   One assumes that it's being gay, but it's actually that he shares her gift of seeing the future.  Jay plays his buddy.  That's as close to a gay character as he gets.

Surface (2005-2006):  Marine biologist Lake (Lake?): her "will they or won't they?" sparring partner, insurance salesman Rich (Jay), and a teenage boy (Carter Jenkins, left, recent photo) discover a "new and dangerous" species of marine life.  This one actually looks interesting.

By the way, Carter, who went on to star in Shadow Diaries, has an adult video (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Jonathan Taylor Thomas: The teen idol superstar plays gay characters, retires from acting before he can show us his d*ck. Probably

Link to the n*de photos

During the early 1990s, ABC offered a "family-friendly" lineup on Wednesday nights, beginning with The Wonder Years, with Fred Savage courting the Girl of His Dreams in the 1960s.  We sang a parody of the theme song, the Beatle's "With a Little Help from My Friends":

What would you do if I spat on your shoes?
Would you get up and kick me to the moon?

Before turning the channel to CBS, with The Nanny and Melrose Place.

But we knew about each of the shows, because you knew about every show in the era. They included:

Doogie Houser, with Neil Patrick Harris (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) as a 13 year old doctor named Doogie.

Coach, with Craig T. Nelson as a coach.

And Home Improvement, with Tim Allen as a grunting, sweating macho man who hosts a tool-themed tv series and tries to instill grunting, sweating masculinity into his three sons.  Zachery Ty Bryant (playing Brad), the eldest and most muscular, was promoted as a teen idol to draw in teenage girls (they weren't aware of gay boys).  But oddly, it was Jonathan Taylor Thomas (playing Randy) who took off, causing millions of teenage and preteen girls to tune it (again, no gay boys exist).  It quickly jumped to #2 in the ratings.

Wait -- Brad is a jock, a football star, a letterman who every girl in the school swoons over.  Randy is soft, bookish, somewhat femme, playing "a fairy" in the school play, an aspiring actor and journalist.  How did Jonathan Taylor Thomas do it?

The showrunners were stumped. They should have realized that straight girls and gay boys just starting to recognize their romantic interests prefer soft, cuddly, and relatable: Malcolm, not Reese (Malcolm in the Middle), Chris, not Drew (Everybody Hates Chris); Adam, not Barry (The Goldbergs). 

In the mid-1990s, Home Improvement moved to Tuesdays, in the hope that its popularity would help stragglers like Spin City.  We still steered clear of the grunting, sweating Tim Allen, quickly changing the channel to Frasier (CBS) and then back for Drew Carey (ABC).    

But we could hardly ignore JTT; he was on every magazine cover, in every talk show.

He presented at the Emmies and the Golden Globes.

We saw him waving in Thanksgiving and Christmas parades

He appeared in specials honoring Tom Cruise and Lauren Hutton

He praised James Bond in a documentary about the super-spy.

Elton John hugged him.

He played Tom Sawyer opposite Devon Sawa's Huckleberry Finn in Tom and Huck (1995), with a story only vaguely related to the original novels.

An adventure boy opposite Devon Sawa (right) and Scott Bairstow (left, n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) in Wild America (1997).

More after the break.  

Weird Science, the movie and tv show: three gay-subtext couples, two gay-vague guys, and a lot of beefcake.

Link to the n*de dudes

Weird Science (1985) is a John Hughes brat pack comedy with a paranormal twist. Nerds Gary and Wyatt's (Anthony Michael Hall, Ilan-Mitchell Smith) are discouraged because the Girls of Their Dreams are dating a pair of belligerent, obnoxious preppies (Robert Downey Jr., Robert Rusler), and won't give them a chance.  So they use a computer to create their perfect dream girl, Lisa: she is not only attractive but super-smart, plus she has magical powers.

I forget most of the plot after 40 years, but wikipedia has helpfully filled in the details, Instead of dating them, Lisa conjures them a car, gets them fake ids, and hosts a wild party, where she thwarts their adversaries and their bullying older brother, military-school graduate Chet (Bill Paxton).

She also summons a pack of rabid bikers to kidnap the Girls, so Gary and Wyatt can mount a daring rescue and win them.

It was cheesy stuff, and entirely heteronormative.  There was a scattering of the incessant homophobia that one sees in every John Hughes movie, but spewed by the evil Chet, not by one of the good guys.  That was a big win in the era.  

Plus some strong gay subtexts between Gary and Wyatt and the prettyboy preppies Ian and Max.  And quite a surprising amount of beefcake

I wanted to do a "any gay roles/are they gay in real life" profile of one of the guys, but I can't find anything suitable.

Don't pay attention to the femme-half shirt and girly beneath-the-belt stuff.  Ilan-Mitchell Smith, now a history professor, is straight in real life.

Anthony Michael Hall, the darling of the Brat Pack, appeared in Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Johnny B Goode, and as an adult The Dead Zone and Awkward.  Straight characters, with maybe one exception, and straight in real life.

Brat Packer Robert Downey Jr. appeared in Back to School, The Pick-Up Artist, Johnny B. Goode, became famous for Chaplin (playing the silent-era comedian), and went on to play Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes.  More straight characters, with maybe one exception, and....well, you get the idea.

At least we know that Robert Rusler is a gay ally: he befriended his Nightmare on Elm Street 2 co-star Mark Patton, and took him to some of the gay bars in West Hollywood (no, we never met).  But his tv work, in The Outsiders, Babylon 5, Snoops, Murder She Wrote, Bones, Ray Donovan...as far as I can tell, all heteronormative.  And...straight in real life.

Let's try the Weird Science TV Series.

It aired on the USA Network from 1994 to 1998. I watched on occasion, usually while on the treadmill at the gym. Gary and Wyatt are now played by Michael Manasseri and John Mallory Asher. Lisa characterizes herself as a "magic genie," and Wyatt's parents are absent, leaving his older brother Chet (Lee Tergesen) to look after/bully them.  

The "winning the Girl of Our Dreams" plotline appeared in just the first two or three episodes; later Lisa turns the boys into girls, clones them,  turns them into rock stars, traps them in a horror movie, traps them in The Twilight Zone, transports them to the Old West, and brings a video game villain to life. 

More after the break

"You Spin Me Round": The Theme Song of 300 Sunday Afternoons in a Leather Bar

In West Hollywood, gay bars always had a theme song that you would hear over and over, at least once an hour, every time you visited.

 I went to Mugi, the Asian bar in Hollywood, almost every Saturday night, sometimes Wednesday or Friday, too.  That means that I heard "One Night in Bangkok" at least 300 times.

I went to the Faultline, the leather bar on Melrose, near Los Angeles City College, almost every Sunday afternoon for their Beer and Soda Bust.  The traditional schedule was Church 10:30 am, brunch at the French Quarter 12:00, Gym 2:00 pm, and the Faultline by 4:00 pm.  We hung out on the patio unless it was raining, and it never rains in Southern California.

Around 6:00 pm we left, and picked up tangerine chicken on the way home to eat while watching The Simpsons, Married...with Children, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, and Sliders (Jerry O'Connell, sigh).

Sometimes I went on Friday or Saturday nights, too.  So I must have heard their song over 1,000 times.

I never heard it anywhere else. I didn't know the title or the group, and I didn't bother asking.

It seemed to be a Gay Pride anthem:

Open up the closet door, watch out, here I come.

Although some of the lyrics seemed to involve a bar pickup:

You, I don't even know your name, baby.

You, I want to get you alone, baby.

With a chorus:
Round, round, round, round, something something baby, round round round round.

Years later, I heard the song again, at the gym of all places, and it brought me back to those many nights and Sunday afternoons surrounded by shirtless and leather-clad men.  When I got home, I did an internet search.


It's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)", by the British band Dead or Alive, released in December 1984, peaked at #4 on the dance charts in January 1985.

Boy, did I get the lyrics wrong!  The "gay pride anthem":

Not: Open up the closet door, watch out, here I come.

But:  Open up your lovin' arms, watch out here I come.

Not: You, I don't even know your name, baby/ You, I want to get you alone, baby

But: If I, I get to know your name, baby / Then I could trace your private number, baby

So you're planning to stalk him?

No specific gay content, although the lead singer of the bad was the fabulously feminine Peter Burns (bottom left), an androgyne in the mold of Boy George, who married a woman and then a man, but divorced him and declared in homophobic contempt that "gay marriage doesn't work.  It's better to marry a woman."

Other members were Mike Percy, Steve Coy, and Tim Lever.

I'm still trying to figure out why an androgynous dance number was the theme song in a leather bar with no androgyny and no dancing.

It doesn't really matter.  Even though I know the lyrics now, I still can hear in my head the gay pride anthem from 300 Sunday afternoons at the Faultline:

Open up the closet door, watch out, here I come.

See also: One Night in Bangkok

Call it Thunder: 40 Years of Fleetwood Mac

Chad Allen: The Dr. Quinn hunk is outed, but still plays heterosexual romantic leads and a gay detective. With his cock and 1990s San Francisco

Hung Harvey: I hook up with the boyfriend of Sabrina the Teenage Witch

10 Gay Movies I Hated

I haven't seen a lot of gay-themed movies since 2005, when I moved to small-town America, but before that, living in West Hollywood, New York, and Fort Lauderdale, I saw practically everything.  Some were good, but a lot were awful: angst-loaded melodramas set in worlds where there is no gay community, every heterosexual is homophobic, lesbians turn straight, and gay men keep falling in love with women.

Here is the list of the biggest offenders, excluding historical artifacts like Cruising and The Boys in the Band, and movies where the gay guy dies (which I never see in the first place).

It's Still the 1950s

1. Get Real (1998). The only gay guy in the world (Ben Silverstone), who plasters his room with pictures of hunky footballers but still worries that his parents will "find out.  He falls for a local jock, who won't acknowledge his presence in public, continues to date girls, and beats him up to prove he is heterosexual.  But there are no other options.

2. Sordid Lives (1999).  In "modern" Texas, a drag queen named Brother Boy (Leslie Jordan) is in a mental hospital, undergoing de-homosexual therapy.  Meanwhile, a gay man (Kirk Geiger) moves from Texas to Los Angeles, where he undergoes 300 years of therapy to accept "who he is," but is still terrified that his theater-crowd friends will "find out."  Are you kidding me?  (Southern Baptist Sissies is in the same vein).

3. Cruel Intentions (1999).  Teenage brother and sister have fun destroying people's lives.  Fruity queen (Joshua Jackson, not even the most homophobic of the Jacksons) helps them blackmail his sex partner, a closeted footballer, who tries to turn hetero by throwing out his Judy Garland cds.  Excuse me?  Who researched this movie?

Gay Men Really Want Women

4. The Object of My Affection (1998).  Straight woman (Jennifer Anniston) and gay man (Paul Rudd) fall in love and begin a relationship.  Um. . .what exactly did they think the word "gay" meant?


5. The Opposite of Sex (1998). Teenage girl (Christina Ricci) shows up at her gay brother's house and seduces his lover (Ivan Sergei), who never once states that he's bisexual.  Apparently all gay men are into women, they just like men better -- until they find The Girl of Their Dreams.

6. Party Monster (2003).  Party boy (Macaulay Culkin) says he's gay, but he falls in love with a girl, who almost convinces him to abandon his "destructive lifestyle."  But it doesn't work, and he becomes a murderer.  Those are your choices: turn straight, or kill people

Gay Men are Really Women

7. The Birdcage (1996).  It may have been ok with La Cage aux Folles in 1978, but in 1996, the sight of one effeminate stereotype (Robin Williams) teaching another effeminate stereotype (Nathan Lane) how to butter his toast "like  a man" was infuriating.

8. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). East German boy (John Cameron Mitchell) falls in love with an American GI, and decides to become a woman for him.  Operation is botched, creating a transwoman with an "angry inch," who becomes a punk rocker and falls in love with a homophobic Bible-belt boy.  Same-sex desire doesn't exist; it's all male-female, regardless of the body you inhabit.

Lesbians Switch Teams a Lot

9. Chasing Amy (1997). Hetero man (Ben Affleck) falls in love with a lesbian and begins the task of converting her to heterosexuality.   Isn't that a debunked myth -- lesbians will "turn back" if they meet the right man?  It works, albeit temporarily.

10. Kissing Jessica Stein (2001).  Jessica meets a lesbian. She's astounded, utterly unaware that such things exist.  In Manhattan.  In 2001.  To be fair, she lives in a gay-free Manhattan, where people constantly make heterosexist statements ("Oh, you got flowers!  Who's the guy?").  They begin a relationship, but then Jessica switches back to heterosexual again.

Gay as Arrested Development

11. Chuck and Buck (2000).  The worst gay-themed movie since Cruising.  I'll save it for another post.

See also: 10 Gay Movies I Loved

"Cruising": Homophobic classic about sin, degradation, and dicks in a doomed gay world. With a nude Mr. Big.

The 39 Dumbest Things on TV

20 Musclemen who guided me through the Age of Innocence, from Bomba the Jungle Boy to the American Psycho

Link to the n*de photos

This is a nostalgic journey through the musclemen who gave me my first hints that gay people existed, and guided me from junior high through college and to West Hollywood. They provided a joy that transcended aesthetic pleasure, telling gay kids that we belonged.  We were welcome. 

Everyman, I will go with thee and be thy guide.

In your most need I'll be by your side.

1. Johnny Sheffield played Bomba the Jungle Boy on Tarzan Theater every Saturday afternoon when there wasn't a game.  I never actually made it through a whole movie -- they were dreadfully heterosexist.  But there was always time for those gleaming black-and-white muscles, especially when he was tied up.

2. Bruce Lee.  He died in 1973, but his movies were playing constantly on Kung Fu Theater, and everybody's older brother had his beefcake poster on his bedroom wall.

3. Michael Forest played a god of masculine beauty (literally the God Apollo) on an episode of Star Trek which I saw sometime in the 1970s.

4. Denny Miller. Moments of gay promise as a surfer and a jungle man on Gilligan's Island.

5, David Naughton.  The cutest guy of the Disco Era showed us his stuff in American Werewolf in London (1981).  Plus he also gave us a strong gay subtext in spite of the 1980s homophobia.

6. Yukio Mishima.  It wasn't hard to find gay-themed books in the early 1980s.  Just look for "evil" or "hidden" in the title.  So I found Confessions of a Mask, with Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima's obsession with male muscles and death.  

7. Arnold Schwarzenegger.  The 1980s start and end with Arnold, who single-handedly brought bodybuilding into the mainstream and made it respectable.

8.  Sylvester Stallone gave him a little help with his grunting, sweat-soaked Rambo and Rocky.  We saw his stuff  in The Italian Stallion, a recast of his early adult movie.  

9. John Amos.  Gordy the Weatherman on Mary Tyler Moore, a warrior in a Conan rip-off that we all saw, and my gym buddy.

10. Lou Ferrigno, who played a muscular green Hulk against Bill Bixby's David Banner, dropped by often when I was working at Muscle & Fitness.  Did I mention our hookup?

More after the break

The Adventures of Pete and Pete

Juvenile tv programs of the 1950s and 1960s, such as Captain Kangaroo, Shari Lewis, and Andy's Gang,  were dedicated to socializing kids into the norms of adult society.  The rules may seem odd, the hosts seemed to say, but they were established by wise, sensible adults, and you musst conform. 

Then came the dedicated kidvid networks, Nickelodeon, The Disney Channel, and the Cartoon Network, telling us something quite different.   Adults are inept, crazy, or downright evil.  Their rules make no sense.  Don't even try to conform society: rebel, resist, be yourself.

The benchmark of this new anarchic juvenile tv was Nickelodeon's The Adventures of Pete and Pete (1993-96), about two brothers, teenage Pete (Mike Maronna) and preteen Pete (Danny Tamberelli) living with their parents in the town of Wellsville, New York.

If the two brothers with the same name don't suggest that something is askew in Wellsville, what about the opening song:

Hey, Smilin' Strange, you're looking happily deranged
I could've settled if you shoot me, or have you picked your target yet?

Or the adult characters:

Mom, who has a steel plate in her head that can pick up radio.

Artie, the Strongest Man in the World (Toby Huss, left), who is not at all muscular but brags that he can move a house a whole inch.

Mr. Slurm (Don Creech), the high school shop teacher with a claw for a hand.

Pit Stain Jones, a super-villain whose powers are obvious

Big Pete (Michael Maronna) is drawing close to adulthood, so he is the most conformist, with part-time jobs and career plans and crushes on girls.


But Little Pete (Danny Tamborelli) resists the International Adult Conspiracy on bedtimes and dodgeball, and investigates such mysteries as the "Inspector" tag in clothing, the "time warp" of Daylight Savings Time, and a telephone that has been ringing for 27 years.

More after the break

Chad Allen: The Dr. Quinn hunk is outed, but still plays hetero romantic leads and a gay detective. With his d*ck and 1990s San Francisco

Link to the n*de photos

I finally cleaned out my "Profiles to Do" file,  eliminating Tyler Posey (extremely ugly), Ethan Cutkosky (only four photos), and Raphael Luce (already profiled him). Twelve guys are left: Nicholas Bechtel, Nathaniel Bacon, Ben Patrick Johnson...wait, Chad Allen.  The name brings back a flood of memories.

In 1995, my partner Lane and I moved to San Francisco, because why wouldn't you?  It was Gay Heaven.  It was also very difficult, cold, crowded, dirty, and dangerous.  Lane lasted for about six months before dumping me and high-tailing it back to the comfort of West Hollywood.  I stuck it out for two years.

The main problem: We felt obligated to serve as stand-ins for the thousands of gay men who dreamed of living in Gay Heaven.  Every moment had to count.  Every night was a mad rush of beer busts, bear parties, AIDS benefits, book signings, art openings, film premieres, and hookups, until, by Saturday night we were exhausted, and more often than not just wanted to get Chinese take-out and chill in front of the tube.  So we watched Married..with Children, Lois & Clark, Leaving L.A. (because we had left L.A.), and Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-98)

Jane Seymour played the titular doctor, also known as Doctor Mike, who moved out West in 1867 to deal with gamblers, grifters, bureaucrats, cowboys, Indians, and a lot of sick and dying people.  No gay characters, but come on, she was named Mike, she disguised herself as a man on many occasions, and she had a lesbian-subtext romance with her midwife, Charlotte.  After The Girl died, Doctor Mike adopted her three children and started a romance with a cowboy (Joe Lando).  You have to move on.

Chad Allen played Matthew Cooper, Dr. Mike's adopted son.  His plotlines involved trying to father his younger siblings after Mom's death (by rattlesnake bite), getting a girlfriend (who dies of rabies), being trapped in a cave-in, getting a new girlfriend, getting a gambling addiction, chasing cattle rustlers, and having various accidents.  Sure, it was ridiculous, but in the 1990s everything on tv was ridiculous.  Remember Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210?

Joe Lando appeared in Playgirl, but didn't show his dangly bits.

But Chad did.  At least, some leaked photos purportedly of a young adult Chad made the rounds of celebrity websites in the early 2000s (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends)

Chad had been appearing in heart-warmers and tear-jerkers since he was seven years old: Hotel, Webster, Highway to Heaven, Punky Brewster, and The Wonder Years (that's Fred Savage beside him).

His most iconic role was Tommy Westphal, the autistic son of Dr. Westphal in 17 episodes of  the homophobic medical drama St. Elsewhere (1983-88).  We only watched one episode, and it was homophobic.

The season finale of St. Elsewhere revealed that the entire series was imagined by Tommy as he gazed at a snow globe.   It was all a dream. This enraged fans, but isn't all fiction someone's dream?

Chad also played more conventional roles, like the 12-year old David Witherspoon in 46 episodes of the dramedy Our House (1986-88).  The then-famous curmudgeon Wilford Brimley starred as the grandpa to three cute kids.

And Zach Nichols, who competes with Giovanni Ribisi for the attention of The Girl in 26 episodes of the comedy (sort of) My Two Dads (1987-1990).

In 1996,  Chad was outed when the tabloid The Globe published a leaked photo of him kissing a guy!  

Usually in the 1990s, coming out or being outed meant an instant end to your career, but Jane Seymour was a strong LGBT ally, and insisted that Chad continue appearing as Matthew in every episode of Dr. Quinn.  The writers did manage to avoid giving him a new girlfriend.

More after the break