Getting Hitched Without a Hitch

Congratulations Gio Benitez and his partner Tommy DiDario on their recent engagement. Ah! To do it in Paris! Ah! To do it in the spotlight! Ah! To do it at all!!!

I know, I know, it wasn’t too long ago when we couldn’t get married at all. And it wasn’t must further ago that, God forbid, you were an out of the closet journalist. Thank you Anderson Cooper, Don Lemmon, Robin Roberts…and, of course, Gio Benitez who live the truth because they speak the truth for a living.

Twenty odd years ago I was fired for being gay and in front of the camera. Can I prove it? NO. Do I know being gay was the reason? ABSOUTELY. The show was EXTRA and there were plenty of us gays in front of the camera for the launch. By the end of the first year on the air, there were none of us gays in front of the camera. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I will say I was there at a corporate retreat when EXTRA was still in its development stage and about to launch. There was a beachfront picnic during this retreat when those of us working on the launch could bring their significant others. Our attractive black hostess brought black boyfriend. Our dashing white host also brought his black boyfriend. Two people down from me stood the very powerful boss of Time Warner, Gerald Levin, who promptly turned to the creator/Executive Producer of EXTRA and declared, “We are not launching a multi million dollar show with a black woman and a gay man…FIX IT.” Within days, we had a black hostess and a new host. Let the blood letting begin. And let it be ordained by the highest levels of Time Warner. I was out a year later. “We’re going in a different direction,” they said. “And your kind of segments are not what we are looking for.” But we all knew the real reason.

Ironically, a year later I was hired at GMTV, the now defunct version of America’s “Good Morning America” in part because I am gay. Go figure.

Yes we have come a long way…but not completely far enough. Many actors in Hollywood still have to stay in the closet as a matter of dollars and sense. That is what I wrote about in the first of my “Dark Side of the Bright Lights” book series: NOT TOO COCKSURE. The book revolves around the dangers of having secrets, keeping secrets and telling secrets. Some thirty five critics and reviews refused to touch the book because of the first six very erotic pages. Really? Maybe we haven’t come that far! Can you handle the truth?