Tiger Beat readers, take note: America just got a new gay teen idol.

In the latest issue of People Magazine (on newsstands today) ‘N Sync singer Lance Bass says he is here, queer, and in love with Reichen Lehmkuhl (an openly gay former contestant from The Amazing Race).

While it's true ‘N Sync hasn't had a new album in five years and that posters of Lance probably don't hang in the bedrooms of too many teenage girls, he is nonetheless possibly the most famous gay teen idol the US has ever seen.

Though it would have been better, visibility-wise, had Bass come out while ‘N Sync was still at the top of the charts, it's understandable why he didn't: There is an unofficial “code of silence” for teen idols who are gay. Publicists and managers fear that if a teen idol comes out, he will lose a major segment of his audience: the female fans.

But that may be an unrealistic worry. Chad Allen, a former teen idol, didn't experience any severe fan backlash after he was outed by the Globe in 1996.

Today he says his fan base consists largely of straight women, “who don't give a damn what I do with my personal life. They just think it's exciting and fun, and want to follow my career.”

Girls aren't turned off by Allen's gayness, either. “I was in Seattle with my boyfriend--this was a little while ago--and I was out in the middle of nowhere, in a very rural part of town, and we were holding hands and walking to the grocery store to get some ice cream or something. And a group of teenage girls came by and they saw us, and they started hooting and hollering. And they just thought it was the best thing ever. ‘Oh, my God! You guys are so cute! You're so hot!' [they said]".

Girls and women have changed, but only because gay sexuality has. It's emerged from the underground, thanks in huge part to Queer As Folk, Will & Grace and Brokeback Mountain. More straight girls and women have a chance to see gay sexuality and to be turned on by it (as evidenced by the huge popularity of slash fiction).

Sexuality is also recognized just in general these days as being a lot more fluid. A woman doesn't necessarily look at a man who's with another man, and think, “Oh, he'd never be interested in me.” She could think he's bi, or merely experimenting.

While this new climate is encouraging, only a few years ago, the entertainment world was a far less queer place.

Allen says that shortly after his 1990s series Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman ended, CBS refused to see him for any of their then-upcoming shows. “That was hard. That was tough…. It was scary, because I thought, ‘Maybe … I really won't ever be able to [act] again.'”

But he was. And Allen continues to act today. He's currently working on a film called Save Me, about a man who goes into rehab to “cure” himself of homosexuality.

Like Allen, Danny Pintauro (Who's the Boss?) is an ex-teen idol whose gay orientation was revealed in a tabloid. But for Pintauro, things went a little differently. In 1997, he got a call from the National Enquirer, threatening to out him if he didn't talk. He decided--after being advised by his former co-star Judith Light--to sit down for an interview.

Though it was not entirely his choice to come out, Pintauro was pleased with the article. “It was heartfelt,” he told the Advocate. “There was lots of compassion [in it].”

The Enquirer even included a sidebar, written by Chastity Bono, who was, at the time, GLAAD's Entertainment Media Director. In a GLAAD press release, Bono said the article was “the most sensitive, accurate story dealing with sexual orientation GLAAD has ever seen in the Enquirer.”

As for the effect the outing had on his career, Pintauro told the Advocate he felt being an ex-child star was more of a burden.

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