January 4, 2002 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

on the airoff the press

Brandon is voted off 'Survivor,' but remains on jury

by John Graves

Openly gay Brandon Quinton, a member of the short-lived twenty-something Samburu alliance, was voted off Survivor: Africa in the December 13 episode.

Quinton, a Dallas bartender who was married to a woman shortly before coming out of the closet, discussed his Survivor: Africa experience with Bryant Gumbel on the Early Show the following day.

Gumbel asked Quinton, "What was with that 'Sugar Bear' comment from Tom?" Quinton said, "Tom had nicknames for everyone and mine just happened to be Sugar Bear. I don't know why."

When Gumbel asked him what he meant when said he became a contestant to "to

Brandon Quinton

make a point" Quinton replied, "I watch TV and see twenty-something gay people and they're really promiscuous and they're really strung out, and that's not who I am. I just wanted to show people that there's a whole other side to it. Unwittingly, I think I became a stereotype myself. I think the way the producers edited things that maybe I became like every mainstream gay person's nightmare of being on TV. But I couldn't help that. I'm just who I am. That's all I can be."

Asked if he had been fairly portrayed, Quinton replied, "Absolutely. They caught it on film. I can't say I didn't do those things and say those things. Because I did."

"You think on his part it was kind of a moral crusade?," Gumbel asked, noting that Tom was the contestant who led the effort to oust Quinton.

"I don't think Tom necessarily has any morals," Quinton replied. "I think that he just didn't like me. He's from rural Virginia or Kentucky or redneck land. Wherever he's from, he had never been around anybody like me and he just didn't like me at all."

Asked directly if he thought Tom had a problem with him being openly gay, Quinton replied, "Oh yeah. Definitely. He is kind of a racist and homophobic and all those things. But, I mean, he's a good-hearted guy. He just grew up in a small town and that's how a lot of good old boys in small towns act."

Shortly before being voted off, Quinton was teamed with former Samburu feud-mate Frank for a reward challenge. They won, and shared an outdoor screening of Out of Africa with dinner and popcorn. But fey Brandon and ex-military Frank have never gotten along.

"Oh God. It couldn't have been worse," Quinton said. "That kind of killed that whole experience of the movie. I don't like him. He's a card-carrying NRA member. He's everything I'm not.'

After leaving the competition, Quinton joined a jury of the last eight contestants voted off. They will decide the final winner.

"The jury was the best time I've had in my whole life," he told Gumbel. "Kelly and I had so much fun; we used our great intellect for gossip, and troublemaking. We had a good

time. I think [producer] Mark Burnett actually yelled at us."

Asked where he was going after Survivor: Africa, Quinton replied, "Nowhere. I had a great life before. People look at me and they always think that they need to take care of me and they don't have a lot of respect. I don't think anybody will ever look at me like that again. Twenty-seven days out there-that ain't bad."

Quinton will return to tending bar in what he calls a "hard-core leather-Levi dance club." Falwell is Mad's 'Dumbest of 2001'

Homophobic televangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell, was at the top of Mad magazine's annual list of the 20 dumbest people, events and things of the year for 2001 for his proclamation that "abortionists, feminists, gays and lesbians" were partly to blame for the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"We thought Falwell had reached his personal pinnacle of dumbness a few years ago when he accused the Teletubbies of promoting homosexuality." Mad co-editor John Ficarra told USA Today.

"Give the guy credit." Ficarra went on, "we underestimated him."

New parents' magazine

There's a new monthly magazine out for LGBT parents. It's called And Baby and it joins the four-year-old Proud Parenting in serving the growing community of LGBT parents, as noted in a three-page feature article by Marilyn Elias in USA Today's August 23 issue.

First published last July with an initial run of 100,000, the focus of And Baby is not just on babies, but the entire LGBT parenting experience from birth through grandparenting.

Brooklyn publisher Michelle Darné got the idea for the new magazine when she and Kathleen Weiss, her creative director and spouse, decided to start a family last year.

Darné says that when she and Weiss decided to have a child, "We spent hours surfing the web for gay-friendly insemination doctors and donor facilities. We went to every local bookstore in search of pregnancy and parenting guides, and we consulted several financial and legal advisors about estate planning to ensure the security of our union and the care of our children. Most of the fragmented information we collected came from mainstream material that did not address the unique obstacles faced by GLBTs."

"For gays and lesbians,” Darné told Gay Health magazine (July 18), “there is always fear. First you have to make those calls and say, 'This for me and my lover.' You have to get that person on the other end of the line to understand your situation so they can actually help you. It's costing my partner and me thousands of dollars to prepare for a child. It's not as if you go out one night and the next day you find out that you're pregnant. It just

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doesn't work that way in our community. It's a lot of planning, and it can run anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000, depending on your physician and the procedure you choose. I actually have to adopt my child even though I am the biological mother, because Kathleen has the maternal rights. When we got involved in this process, we didn't know any of this."

"There are millions and millions of gay and lesbian parents," Darné told the Sacramento gay and lesbian newspaper Mom, Guess What last June. "Now they have a magazine that covers their specific issues and difficulties."

And Baby is on line at www.and babymag.com.

'Oh yeah, this feels right'

"I feel very much an advocate of the storyline," actress Laura Innes tells Michael Kort in the December 25 Advocate. Her character, Dr. Kerry Weaver, came out last year on the NBC medical drama ER.

"But, Innes added, “that being said, I don`t feel I'm an advocate for having it happen in a way that's going to make the lesbian and gay community happy every minute.

"The reality of someone's coming-out can happen in all different kinds of ways," she explained. "For this character, it seems appropriate that it's happened in an incremental way and sometimes a cowardly way. If it were me, Laura, and I came in to work after coming out to my boss, I'd be like, 'What's the big fucking deal?' But I'm not Kerry, so I honor the tensions that exist for this woman, who has a great deal of difficulty with intimacy."

Innes told Kort she wanted to lesbians and gays to understand, "I want to say, 'Trust us, we're going to do the right thing.' But along the way there will be some bumps in the road that feel correct to me."

Before they picked Elizabeth Mitchell to play Kerry's first lover, Dr. Kimberly Legaspi, last year, the show's producers first cast another actress. But after a few scenes were shot, Innes realized something was missing.

"It had nothing to do with the other actress's ability," Innes told Kort, “it's just with her there wasn't that little buzz, and with Elizabeth there was. I wanted the mainstream audience to fall in love with this woman. I will say that the chemistry that existed between Elizabeth and I was much better than the chemistry that existed with any of the guys they hooked me up with. She's beautiful, a wonderful actress and a wonderful person."

Innes told Kort that, during a dinner scene when her character realized she was falling in love with Legaspi, she found she was having the same feelings as her character.

"I remember during that scene," Innes told Kort, "having a real in-the-moment feeling of wanting to kiss her and being amazed that I was feeling that way. It was like, 'Oh yeah, this feels right.'

Loura Innes

Although Kerry has a new lover this season, Sandy Lopez, a firefighter played by actress Lisa Vidal (The Division), Innes doesn't know how the romance will play out

"But," Innes went on to explain, “I know the writer-producers [including openly lesbian Dee Johnson] are committed to this storyline in a long-term way."

Innes told Kort her character would not revert to heterosexuality saying, “Wouldn't that be awful? It would be so destructive to go through this coming-out arc and then have Kerry say, 'Oh, never mind. That's like when I run into certain fans who go, 'You're not really, are you?' They can't even say the word gay. So I say, 'Yeah, I am.` Lance Loud dies at age 50

Lance Loud, who publicly came out on national TV in 1973 when he and his family were showcased on the PBS reality series An American Family, passed away December 22 due to complications from hepatitis C.

Loud's coming-out actually happened in 1971 when the daily lives of the Loud family were being filmed for the 12-part series, a precursor to today's Real World and the plethora of reality shows it spawned.

After the series aired, Loud remained in New York for several years and performed in a rock band called the Mumps.

In 1981, he moved back to California, where he studied journalism. He wrote articles for the Advocate, Details and Interview, and also had a few small television and film roles as an actor.

Whenever An American Family was rebroadcast, Loud returned to the spotlight. A one-hour sequel appeared on HBO in 1983.

Loud was 50 years old when he passed.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, a lesbian-gay 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 contributed to this column.

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