on the airoff the press

Gays on 'Millionaire' show don't raise network's eyebrows

by John Graves

A big closet opened on network TV a few weeks ago when contestant Rob Coughlin of Shoreline, Washington embraced his samesex partner onstage after winning $500,000 on the hit quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Host Regis Philbin introduced Coughlin's companion, Mark Leahy, as soon as the contestant walked onstage saying, “Your partner, Mark, is in the audience, hey, Mark!" Later on, Philbin asked Leahy what his partner should do if he won $1 million.

"Get a new wardrobe," Leahy replied.

Candidates are selected from the almost 240,000 people who call daily by an elimination process that includes responses to questions and a random drawing. No personal questions are asked.

Lloyd Braun, co-chairman of the ABC Entertainment Group, said that each contestant on the show was actually a “slice-of-life, a mini-drama.”

"You get to not only meet the contestant when he or she is in the hot seat, but you meet their spouse or partner or 100-year-old grandmother," he said. “It's not judgmental. It's totally accepting.”

When Coughlin decided to quit and walk off Bernhard in the city

with $500,000, Philbin called out to Leahy, "Hey, Mark, come down" whereupon Leahy bounded onto the stage and hugged Coughlin.

Unlike times past, ABC executives said there was no reaction from viewers to the episode.

Bisexual actress and comic Sandra Bernhard portrays a sex therapist who deals with the eccentric tenants in her East Village apartment in the film Somewhere in the City, now airing on cable's Flix channel.

Although executive producer Michael Searching for her identity

Davies admitted that he had been a bit anxious when the show was taped the week before it aired, he nevertheless said, "We treat everyone the same way, and there's never been an issue about people's personal relationships. If a contestant is married 25 years and white and middle-class with 2.4 kids and brings his wife to the show, that's fine. Or whether somebody brings their college buddy or mother or sister or lover, we don't care. We don't care about ethnic things; we don't care about sexual things. We treat everybody the same. The show broadly reflects society."

That's a far cry from the very negative response Chuck Woolery gave several years ago when he was asked if there would ever be lesbigay contestants on his original Dating Game show.

Earle Marsh, who co-authored The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, told reporters that he could recall no previous quiz show in which either gay or multiracial couples were so evident.

"Twenty years ago there would have been serious problems with network standards and practices, the censors," Marsh said. "They might have worried about segments of the audience being homophobic or have other problems. I'm sure at one point the choice of people to go on the air might have raised red flags, [but] in today's environment we've moved beyond that.'

""

Producer Davies added that Philbin had introduced the companions of other gay contestants who had been sitting in the audience. Davies added that the first time that happened there were "definitely some raised eyebrows by some members of my team."

"I told Regis: Just refer to his partner in the audience. And that was it," Davies said.

If you would like to become a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and you are a United States citizen over 18, call the show's staff at 800-433-8321 from 6 pm to 2 am by February 9.

Tilda Swinton plays a bisexual lawyer searching for her identity and a chance to become a judge in the steamy, surrealistic film Female Perversions now playing on the HBO family of cable channels.

The stressed-out lawyer, the product of a dysfunctional family, finds herself constantly distracted by disturbing waking dreams that severely interfere in her work and her relationships. Then, just as her dream of becoming a judge comes true, her lover, a woman, leaves her to try dating men again.

Finally, Swinton's character finds she has a spiritual bond with Ed, her 13-year-old, very butch and somewhat disturbed niece, when she realizes that she and Ed are on the same life journey.

Whoopi and Jeanine as lovers

Jeanine Garafolo and Whoopi Goldberg will play actresses who are playing lesbian lovers during a movie production scene on an upcoming episode of the critically acclaimed cable crime series The Sopranos. Men doing manly things with men

Senior correspondent Diana Naiad talked to openly gay former baseball star Billy Dean about his life after coming out in a feature interview on the Fox Sports channel newsmagazine show Going Deep recently.

During the interview, Bean told Naiad that he was telling his story to the media so that other gay athletes wouldn't have to go through what he had gone through.

One of Bean's former teammates who was interviewed for the show was supportive of Bean, but said that coming out in male team sports was fatal to a person's career because "male team sports is about manly men doing manly things with men." (I'm biting my tongue right now.)

After the interview was over, there was a particularly good discussion between Naiad and the show's host about why it was harder for gay athletes in male team sports to come

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out. At the end of the discussion, the show's male host told Naiad, “What is really needed is for a big star [still playing] in male team sports to come out and say I'm gay-get over it!"

Although I don't know if she is gay or not, Naiad, who became famous for her openocean swim from Cuba to Florida some years ago, sure had my gaydar beeping. So did the male host.

Fox Sports, MTV air Shepard spot

A big thanks to the Fox Sports channel and MTV for airing the GLSEN anti-hate public service ad featuring Judy Shepard, Mathew Shepard's mom, in prime time. Stone may be in 'Boston Marriage'

Sharon Stone, who played a bisexual murder suspect in Basic Instinct, has been talking with producers about a role in Boston Marriage, David Mamet's new Broadway-bound play about Victorian-era lesbians.

Set in the 1880s, the show is about two women who were once lovers. One of them, Claire, is married to a rich man, but wants to use her old girlfriend Anna's apartment for a rendezvous with a young woman she is trying to seduce. Anna agrees, but only if she can watch.

The producers want Stone to play Anna opposite Mamet's wife Rebecca Pigeon as Claire. Stone's spokeswoman confirmed that the actress is considering the role.

The role was turned down by Anne Heche who just directed Stone in a nude love scene with Heche's girlfriend, Ellen DeGeneres, in HBO's If These Walls Could Talk II in which DeGeneres and Stone portray a lesbian couple who decide to have a baby.

"I didn't know if [the scene] was going to be appropriate or not, but it turned out to be so beautifully done," Stone told a British newspaper.

If These Walls Could Talk II is set to debut on HBO in March 5. DeGeneres is also working on a stand-up comedy special for HBO and a new sitcom to air on CBS.

Ellen's new sitcom: 'I'm playing me'

USA Today TV critic Robert Bianco reports that Ellen DeGeneres recently talked to the Television Critics Association about her threat to walk away from Hollywood two years ago after ABC cancelled her sitcom Ellen.

DeGeneres told the association that the threat was blown out of proportion.

"My show was cancelled. I was sad. I was going through a grieving period, and there was a little bitterness, and I made mistakes publicly," she said. "There are things I acted out publicly that should've just been my grieving period alone in my corner of my basement, rocking naked."

Although in the past both she and CBS executives have stonewalled questions about the sexual orientation of her character on the new sitcom, DeGeneres told the critics association, "I'm playing me, so I will be gay because, as you've heard, I am."

Advocate readers picked the simultaneous coming out of DeGeneres and her ABC sitcom character as one of the most significant moments in modern lesbigay history. Penthouse pet comes out

Juliet Cariaga, Penthouse magazine's "Pet of the Year 2000," came out as a barely bisexual lesbian when she appeared on the infamous Howard Stern Show recently.

I say barely because Cariaga, who had been attracted to women since childhood, told Stern that she was still finding out about herself and wasn't quite ready to declare herself completely lesbian.

Stern likes to feed his on-air ego by having women guests say they find him attractive or would consider going out with him. (He backs out quickly if someone really takes him up on his offer.) He asked Cariaga if she would go out with him. She refused to respond despite Stern's pleadings, that continued throughout the show.

On the air, off the cuff, out of a job

Canadian television news anchor Avery

Haines was fired in January for a joking remark about politically correct inclusiveness that aired when she mistakenly thought she was off the air.

It seems Haines stuttered when she had trouble reading a script during a CTV Newsnet broadcast and, when she thought the microphones were off, quipped, “I kind of like the stuttering thing. It's like equal opportunity, right? We've got a stuttering newscaster. We've got the black, we've got the Asian, we've got the woman. I could be a lesbian, folk-dancing, black woman stutterer."

Although Haines apologized twice on air that day after realizing her comments had gone out over the airwaves, the network fired her after viewers complained.

Xena has queer Battle of the Bands

A few weeks ago, Xena and Gabrielle took on homophobia on a brand-new, all-rock musical episode of Xena, Warrior Princess.

Things got under way when a group of barbarians and a group of Amazons threaten to go to war to determine which group would walk away with the much-prized lyre of the musical god Terpsichore.

Xena and Gabrielle intervene and use the 1960s song "War (What is it Good For)" to convince the two warring parties to settle their claims to Terpsichore's lyre in a "battle of the bands" to be held in Melodia, "the music capitol of Greece."

Since Terpsichore intended his lyres to be available to anyone, the contest was open to all bands. Xena and Gabrielle soon find themselves in charge of preparations for what was to become a musical event of Woodstock proportions. Just then, Joxter's other brother Jase shows up to audition as a flamboyant disco diva dressed in silks and feather boas with a Hispanic accent.

Jase makes a grand musical entrance to a disco version of "Dancing in the Moon Light,” complete with club lights and an entourage of hunky male dancers in skimpy outfits. Joxter refuses to acknowledge his brother and scorns him for "being, you know, different." The barbarian leader of a heavy metal group goes even further and hatefully shouts out some really homophobic names at Jase until Xena loses her patience and puts an end to the hate speech.

In the midst of all this organizing, Xena's mother makes a surprise visit and tries to fix Xena up with a man. Xena tells her mother to cease her matchmaking and that, with Gabrielle at her side, the baby has all the family she needs. Xena's mom protests, declaring Xena needs a man so her child will have a male role model. Xena's mom finally changes her mind when Xena and the Amazons then break into the song "Sisters Are Doing It by Themselves."

As if that wasn't enough, in the previous week's episode, Xena and Gabrielle were flabbergasted to find out that the father of Xena's unborn child is really a woman. It was none other than her old foe Callisto, who had tried to destroy Xena in the past because the older, evil Xena's army had killed her parents. Xena had killed Callisto last season and then rescued her soul from hell and allowed Callisto to become an angel by forgiving her past misdeeds in the "Paradise Lost" season opener this last fall.

Callisto revealed that she had impregnated Xena because the powers of heaven had told her that it was her destiny to return to mortal form.

Talk about your same-sex family. Now Xena and Gabrielle will raise a child sired by a woman and carrying that same woman's soul! Gabrielle, meanwhile, ever true to Xena, has twice told Joxster that, although she cares for him, there is absolutely no chance they will become an item.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, an LGBT public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm, and at http://radio.cwru.edu. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.