Lloyd Daniels: G-A-Y Nudity

Music competition programs like X Factor and American Idol tend toward the heterosexist: judges' comments regularly assume that gay people don't exist, and when a candidate is a bit androgynous, the criticism is harsh and unyielding.  Gay candidates typically remain strictly closeted until after their 15 minutes of fame are well over.

Lloyd Daniels was more open than most, when he appeared on the X Factor in Britain in 2009.  At age 16, he was the youngest finalist to appear on the program.  Except for the odd "Suburbian Girl," his songs were rather obviously about male-male love. Plus he posed in the shower.

He's still posing in the shower.  There are about a dozen nude photos on the Last.fm website.

Now he is a regular performer at the G-A-Y nightclub in London.  He has appeared in the gay-subtext horror comedy Love Bite (2012),  about a werewolf who preys on virgins -- with male but not female nudity.

Last summer he toured with the musical Up 4 a Meet?, about gay men looking for love with a Grindr-like dating app -- and getting naked on stage.

That's lots of nudity.

Oddly enough, some of his fans keep posting  things like: "He's not gay!!!!!  Get a life!  Just because he's hotter than you, you got to be a hater!"

And he actually hasn't made any public statements like "Yep, I'm gay."

Do people really need to do that anymore?