How to Eat Fried Worms (Thomas Rockwell, 1973) is one of the classic novels of my childhood: Billy brags that he can eat anything, so when his friend Alan offers him $50 to eat a worm a day for 15 days.... He can prepare them any way he wants, but Alan will provide the worms. The parents are in on the scheme, there is no bullying involved, each of the boys has a buddy-bonding best friend, and the only girl is Billy's sister. No one wins the Girl of His Dreams.
Remembering the buddy-bonds and the absence of the heterosexist trajectory, I eagerly tuned in to the Disney Channel version (2006). But now Billy (Luke Benward) is confronted by a gang of bullies led by Joe (Adam Hicks), he joins a group of friend instead of a special buddy, and there is a Girl of His Dreams.
A rather disappointing start to Luke Benward's career. Let's see if he has redeemed himself since with some gay roles.
According to the IMDB, Luke was born in 1995 in Franklin, Tennesse.
He first appeared on screen playing Mel Gibson's son in We Were Soldiers (2002).
The infamous homophobe Mel Gibson? That's even worse.
After roles in the revamped Family Affair (2002) and Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), Luke hit Disney gold with Fried Worms (2006).
His Disney stardom assured, he continued with Mostly Ghostly (2007): A shy boy (Sterling Beaumon) encounters a ghost boy (Luke) and his sister, who has a crush on him. He must figure out how they died before it's too late, and win the Girl of His Dreams.
Left: Luke and Sterling Beamon strangling Miles Heizer. Neither has actually worked with Miles Heizer. Maybe they're friends?
Minutemen (2008): A teen nerd (Luke), his buddy, and the Girl Next Door become time travelers, allowing him to best the obnoxious jock who is dating the Girl of His Dreams. Guess who he ends up with.
Dog Gone (2008): A boy (Luke) rescues a dog from bumbling thieves, bests the school bully (Cameron Monaghan, on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends), and wins the Girl of His Dreams.
Things are not looking good for you, Luke Baby.
Let's skip past Girl v Monster and Zombies and Cheerleaders to Luke's first major tv role in Good Luck Charlie (2013). Charlie is a girl, not a boy, and she doesn't bring good luck; she is merely the subject of a video diary filmed by her father. Luke plays Beau Landry, an employee at Bob's Bugs Be Gone who meets, falls in love with, and eventually becomes the boyfriend of Teddy (another girl. What's with this show?).
Ok, what about
Ravenswood (2013-14), a teen mystery series featuring dark secrets in a small town? Luke plays Dillon Sanders, who is dating focus character Olivia but is secretly plotting to prevent her from discovering the dark secrets. Oh, and he kills her father. That sort of ends the relationship.
Cloud 9 (2014): A snowboarder and her obnoxious boyfriend are trained by snowboarding great Will Cloud (Luke). The boyfriend gets dumped, and...well you know the rest.
Measure of a Man (2018): Dude gets a girlfriend.
Life of the Party (2018): Middle-aged Deanna, dumped by her husband, returns to college, and has s*x with a fratboy (Luke), who becomes obsessed with her. Guess what? He's the son of the woman Deanna was dumped for.
I'm tired of this. Let's see what else Luke has been up to.
He's done some music, such as the theme song for Cloud 9, and he has appeared in the music videos of several other artists, including Martina McBride and Jason Aldean.
Wait -- he's the son of Christian country-western singer Aaron Benward, shown here with his boyfriend...um, I mean singing partner Scott Reeves -- and the grandson of Christian music producer Jeoffrey Benward. They have won Dove Awards, and Jeoffrey was inducted into Christian Music Hall of Fame.
Why didn't anyone tell me this before? Luke Baby is too fundamentalist to play a gay character, and if he's gay in real life, he's got to be extremely closeted.According to the Who's Dated Who website, Luke has been in relationships with several women, and is currently dating Ariel Winter (Alex Dumphy on Modern Family). You know there were gay characters on that show, right?
Luke's Instagram is confusing: Very few photos of Ariel or any girlfriend, a lot of guy-hugging, almost as if he's trying to fool you into thinking that he's gay.
Won't work, dude.
Plus he's buddies with the gay Miles Heizer, and that adult video (on
RG Beefcake and Boyfriends) looks a lot like it's aimed at a guy...
