James Hillis's blog

“I don’t even use the term sex, to me it’s way beyond sex. It’s something so intense that goes beyond the physical. It’s a closeness and intimacy that’s far deeper than anything else you’ll ever share with anyone.”

Tom Goss, 27, is waxing poetic about the awesomeness of love-making. The gay singer-songwriter — who last summer had a gay anthem and #2 video on Logo’s Click List with his single "Rise" — has a new CD, Back to Love, out this week on iTunes, Amazon and CDBaby. And lunching in DC a few days prior, the impending release date of Goss’s musical baby has given him cravings: He’s pouring salt all over his plate, then mopping it up with meteor-sized gobs of butter on microscopic pieces of bread.

“I’m from Wisconsin. We eat a lot of dairy.” Dude, you may want to cut that with a fruit plate. “Could I have some crème brulee?” Goss asks the waiter. For those of you who still didn’t know — and I’m one of you — crème brulee is fancy speak for custard. More dairy. Goss seems pretty healthy now, but I see a big phlegm intervention in his future.

But, back to sex…

(More Tom, more sex, more music, and from seminary to gay pop star below, along with Tom’s new video…)

On the April 1 elimination show of ABC’s blockbuster reality competition, Dancing with the Stars, the judges chose Steve Guttenberg, star of Police Academy and Three Men and a Baby, for a repeat dance. But Guttenberg wasn’t partnered with Anna Trebunskaya, his teammate for the season. Instead he danced a cheek-to-cheek tango with her husband, DWTS dancer Jonathan Roberts – a tango they had briefly practiced earlier in the week when Trebunskaya fell too ill to rehearse.

Was the televised “Mango” a trial balloon being sent up by DWTS executive producer Conrad Green? Are Green and ABC contemplating a same-sex dance team for a season of DWTS? Was this an opportunity to judge audience response? (For the record: the audience LOVED it.)

Cut to late January, and AfterElton.com’s interview with Green for our insanely informative (if we don't say so ourselves) 2-part investigative report, "Gays in Primetime". At the time, we asked Green: Would they consider a same-sex partner dance team for DWTS? Green found the idea “interesting,” saying he was “open to it.” And straight-shooting ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson responded affirmatively to the notion, as well: “Yeah. I think there’s no reason not to.”

In fact, Green seemed to be working through the idea for the first time in our interview:

“I wouldn’t be against it (same-sex partners on the show) in principle. But I think where the difficulty comes, is we try to duplicate the real competition rules. … However we are an entertainment show so we are not necessarily bound by that. It’s not something we’d have to adhere to; it’s something we tend to adhere to. The other thing is you’d have to make sure that the dancer felt comfortable with it. And what I wouldn’t want to do is let it turn into a circus, if you see what I mean. If it would just look silly and feel like a stunt.”

Ruminating on the concept, Green continued, “But having said all that: it’s an interesting thought. It would make quite a statement in a way. I’m sort of open to it, but curious about the implications of it.” Green twice repeated the phrase “it’s interesting” as he turned the idea over.

Stuff you should know about Bryan Fuller: He hates Queer as Folk. He has “a huge lesbian agenda”. His beautifully written, eye-popping pilot for ABC’s Pushing Daisies was named one of the 10 best television broadcasts of 2007 by The Washington Post.

And – boys – he’s totally adorable. Like clean puppies and chocolate birthday cake adorable. Noon on your favorite beach in June with a fistful of nostalgia-laden boardwalk cuisine adorable. Freshly cut Christmas tree, decorated in candy canes and red ribbons with a cute miniature train running through a cute miniature town underneath adorable.

And did we mention – he’s crazy talented. Fuller spoke to us for part two of our special investigative report: "Gays in Primetime", but there just wasn’t enough room for all the wonderfulness that is ... Bryan. So here are more tidbits from our interview. Topics include the gay Star Trek script that never got made, the de-gayed gay dad on Dead Like Me, the big gay character-driven show Fuller dreams of doing, and - *EXCLUSIVE* - his big reveal on the identity of Pushing Daisies’ gay character.

Click on through the jump for the gay spoiler and lots more Fuller!

Queer Eye is in its final season and in today's main page article, three of its stars – Ted Allen, Jai Rodriguez and Kyan Douglas – give us an exclusive interview on how QE changed the WORLD!

After that interview, Kyan called back to talk more – and revealed news about his engagement to gay rights activist Greg Durham. “Well, I haven’t ever said anything to the press,” Kyan told AfterElton.com, “but we’ve called off the engagement. We’re no longer together.”

Kyan said that announcing the engagement a year ago was “without a doubt” a statement about gay marriage rights, adding that “Greg and I really came together, we really got to know each other at a marriage [rights] rally.”

But that initial announcement wasn’t something planned. “I was asked about it in the Philippines,” Kyan clarified. “[A reporter] said ‘Are you and Greg getting married?’ And I said, ‘Well as a matter of fact we are.’ And that got picked up over here [in the US]. Where we were at the time with it - that was just the truth.”

A big shout-out to the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) from all of us here at AfterElton.com. For AfterElton.com’s recent "Gay Newsmen – A Clearer Picture" series, all the gay journalists who agreed to participate had attended NLGJA events, and the existence of NLGJA is part of what made those articles possible.

Founded in 1990, the NLGJA is a big reason that in 2007 there are a lot more media stories fairly covering LGBT issues. The NLGJA mentors up-and-coming gay journalists, trains reporters how to increase sensitivity to gay issues in their newsrooms, and helps promote workplace equality.

And NLGJA members are instrumental in getting huge news organizations to adopt same-sex domestic partnership benefits – as NBC did just a couple years ago, the notoriously conservative Clear Channel recently adding those benefits as well.

NLGJA president Eric Hegedus told AE that off the top of his head he can’t think of any journalist for whom coming-out jeopardized their career. In fact, Hegedus thinks “once you’ve got that personal weight lifted off your shoulders (by coming out), it can empower you.” If you want to attend an NLGJA convention, get more info or resources, or find out how to become a member, check out the NLGJA website: www.nlgja.org.

As a part of AfterElton.com's Gay Newsmen series, we will be providing daily interviews with gay newsmen here on the blog.

By phone from the ABC News Baghdad bureau, ABC News Correspondent Miguel Marquez spoke to AE this past February during one of his many trips to Iraq. Marquez said the surroundings are so intense that “you become very close” with the fellow reporters there, the security company, even the Iraqi staff. Marquez had just installed an iced cappuccino machine in his quarters, and said, “I’ve become sort of the Starbucks of the bureau.” He also said he’d become “a Lost junkie”, watching all the old episodes of the ABC drama on DVD in the down time.

And he needs the down time. The first two stories Marquez covered in Iraq after arriving in February were the abduction and execution style killings of American soldiers, and the bombing of a girls’ school – where many of the young female students died.

Marquez who began his national news career as an anchor at CNN Headline News, joined ABC in 2005, and was sent to Iraq for the first time just a few months later. . “There’s no question but you’ve got to just step up and do the job,” Marquez told AE, explaining that at ABC the expectations for correspondents are high.

As a part of AfterElton.com's Gay Newsmen series, we will be providing daily interviews with gay newsmen here on the blog.

Paul Mueller is a rising star in the tv news business. After a nationwide career, recently helming newscasts in Boston, Mueller is now an anchor with the Regional News Network (WRNN), a 24-hour news channel servicing New York’s tri-state area with a reach of over 5 million viewers.

Like other gay journalists covered for this series, Mueller too said the unique perspective of a being a gay man may be a part of a “sense of compassion” he taps into that “takes away that boundary of skin color or sexual orientation, or whatever it is that sets the reporter apart from the person being interviewed.”

Mueller said he’s been out in every one of the seven newsrooms in which he’s worked, and never found “being gay, and being out” a problem with employers or colleagues. That includes the small conservative town of Tyler, Texas where Mueller won an Associated Press investigative journalism award for a series on alleged racism in the local police department.

Mueller said he’s always answered the question on sexual orientation when asked, and did his first press profiles mentioning being gay while in Boston. And ultimately he can see the connection to that kind of honesty with his mission as a journalist. “I think the fact that journalism is all about truth and honesty … and letting people know what’s really going on, I think there’s a parallel there to me letting people know who is delivering that truth to them.”

Now, helming prime newscasts from 5-7pm, and 8:30pm for RNN, Mueller did get some resistance early on. Ten years ago, at the start of his career, Mueller saw an agent – who gave Mueller a long list of superficial things he had to change about himself, telling him he was never going to make it in this business. “I was completely crushed,” remembered Mueller. “I went outside of this 50 floor office tower in Manhattan, and literally cried my eyes out.”

But Mueller, who said all he’s ever wanted to do was be in news, gave himself what turned out to be great advice: “I said, forget that. I’m just going to go on like this never happened, and just keep pushing on. That’s exactly what I’ve done.”

As for being honest about his sexuality and career concerns, Mueller has faith the work will speak for itself. “I think what will be judged … is who did the better job of piecing together the story. Whose story was more compelling. Not who was gay, and who was straight.”

As a part of AfterElton.com's Gay Newsmen series, contributing writer James Hillis will be providing daily interviews with gay newsmen here on the blog.

When Thomas Roberts was hired by CNN at age 29 from a small local market he said it “was beyond my wildest dreams.” Right off the bat, Roberts recalled, “I was covering everything from the Olympics to technology to the war on terror.”

An anchor and investigative reporter at NBC Norfolk, Virginia Beach at the time, it may have been an Edward R. Murrow Award winning documentary Roberts did about child welfare issues that caught CNN’s attention. “It was something I felt strongly about,” said Roberts of the documentary, his intention being “to bring something to light that wasn’t getting the coverage it deserved.”