Avan Jogia has a Message For Young Straight Guys: Support Men Who are Into Men

Avan Jogia

Avan Jogia, the 19-year-old co-star of Caprica and Nickelodeon’s teen sitcom VICTORiOUS, is coming out.

Not as gay, but as a straight guy who thinks that gay guys need and deserve more support from their straight guy friends.

And he’s so serious about the message that he’s founded an organization, Straight But Not Narrow, that specifically speaks to other straight males.

His message? Basically, get over it. Being gay should be a complete non-issue. And if you’re worried that someone’s going to think you’re gay just for thinking that, you’re giving other people far too much power over the kind of person you are.

“It doesn’t make you any less of a man, or make it look like you’re into men, if you’re friends with a man who likes men,” he says, amusingly, in his organization’s first PSA. “Let’s just get along. We are, in fact, all men. And men don’t let other men disrespect men, man. They just don’t. So if you’re a real man, man up and stand up for your man friends who like men.”

Already Jogia has enlisted his acting friends to film other PSAs, including his VICTORiOUS co-star Matt Bennett, and The Kids Are All Right actor Josh Hutcherson.

As chance would have it, Jogia is pretty much the perfect spokesperson for this cause: bright, articulate, and funny – all of which I quickly found out when I recently talked to him by phone about this much-needed activism.

AfterElton.com: Congratulations on a terrific project. How’d you get the idea and why?
Avan Jogia: In Canada, we have Pink Shirt Day. A kid had been bullied for wearing pink, people calling him gay. The next day, all his friends wore pink, and it really took off and became this thing in school called Pink Shirt Day. On that day, everyone now wears pink to show their support for equality.

So it comes from that and from my first role on television ever, a TV movie called A Girl Like Me: The Gwen Araujo Story, which is the story of a transgender girl, a terrible story of her being murdered, actually. I played her brother.

I also just thought: straight people need a platform to support their friends, especially straight males.

AE: It’s one thing to be supportive, it’s another thing to go public like you have and enlist your friends in a campaign. Why did you decide to do that?
AJ: At gay pride parades in Vancouver, "straight but not narrow" is a shirt that the straight guys and girls wear to show their support. And the name rang with me, right?

The people who are going to change the way people feel about these things are going be people in the public eye – I use the word “celebrity” selectively. The more straight guys speak out about it, the easier it’s going to be in schools. [My show] VICTORiOUS is seen by that age group. So it just made sense.

Jogia's PSA

AE: Some might say that it’s risky for you to talk about this issue, which is, of course, exactly the problem. I think a lot of straight guys worry that if they take a stand like this, people will think they’re gay. How do you respond to that whole idea?
AJ: I think that anyone who thinks that somebody is gay because they care about equality and equal rights, that just proves our point even further. That’s exactly the problem, what you’re saying. It’s the worry that they’re going to be associated. But what’s the problem? Why is that [association] a problem?

I’m not going to shy away from my family values and my beliefs just because of something people might think. It’s very wrong [for anyone] to go against their own values because they think someone might judge them.

AE: Readers on our site sometimes say, “This actor must be gay because he played a gay role.” And I think to myself, “The truth is it’s not the closeted gay actors who are playing gay roles. It’s the straight ones who are secure in their sexuality.” The people who are freaking out about playing gay are the closet cases.
AJ: Yeah, there’s that argument. They protest too much. I don’t like to call people out or anything like that, but I always feel like if you’re protesting too much … yeah, you’re straight, we got it.

AE: I don’t necessarily think it means they’re gay, but I think it means they’re not very confident.
AJ: Exactly. They’re not confident in their own actions. Unfortunately, the main aggressors of gay youth are straight young males. It’s an unfortunate truth. What we want to do is make it so these males can react to the idea that someone is gay with … almost apathy. Like, “Cool. Okay.” That’s what we’re aiming for.

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