"90210" star Dustin Milligan swears off "gay" jokes

Dustin Milligan has been showing up on my pop culture RADAR quite a bit lately. Sure, I skipped his first CW series, Runaway, but he was adorable as the gay member of the "Ghostfacers" team on Supernatural and is solid as Nu-Dylan on the revamped 90210.

He further got my attention when I heard that he wrote an entry on his website swearing off gay jokes. Milligan had previously done a couple of short videos meant for the Internet that included a "gay" joke and now regrets that performance:

"To all my readers, gay, straight, bi, still deciding: I'm truly sorry and deeply embarrassed by this. My personal views on homosexuality and bisexuality and sexuality in general are so far from the dark place where these kinds of hateful terms come from and are not at all reflected accurately by such a statement. Especially now, when same-sex marriage is such a big issue in the US, I feel the days when jokingly calling someone a "homo" or saying "that's gay" are simply over. No one should be made to feel like they or their sexuality/lifestyle is synonymous with "stupid", and no one should be made to feel like they are less than anyone else because of who they love. It's almost like how, in the past, everyone used to drop the N-bomb like it was a day of the week, but now it's totally unacceptable. I feel, hope, that down the line, it will be the same with sexually derogatory terms as well. I hope my kids never use these hurtful words as flippantly as I have. Again, I am ashamed for having said it and to everyone out there, fans, friends, family, and the LGBT community: I'm sorry."

Okay, I could quibble and get annoyed with his "deciding" and "lifestyle" word choices (perhaps with a suggestion that he consider using the "enter" key on his keyboard more often) but there's something really touching about his words and the fact that he felt compelled to write them at all (honestly, how many other actors have done far worse and not felt the need to say anything?).

Hopefully, he's part of a rising tide against this kind of "humor".