Luke Macfarlane Says He Is Gay

LOS ANGELES — Next month, in the season finale of his hit television series Brothers & Sisters, Canadian actor Luke Macfarlane will dress his best and say his vows as his character, Scotty Wandell, marries his partner, Kevin Walker.
It's an episode the London, Ont.-born actor is looking forward to, on may levels: It's one of the few shows on network television to portray a gay marriage between two main characters - a feat the 28-year-old actor is quite proud of, from a professional perspective. But the episode also holds personal resonance for Macfarlane, who wants to be married himself some day, and has finally decided to go public with his own sexual orientation.
Though no secret to his family and close friends, Macfarlane has, until now, been guarded about his personal life as a gay man. Over lunch in Los Angeles, where he lives, he initially insists that he has no concerns about his public revelation - but a few seconds later he is shifting nervously in his chair, and concedes that he is "terrified."
"I don't know what will happen professionally ... that is the fear, but I guess I can't really be concerned about what will happen, because it's my truth.
"There is this desire in L.A. to wonder who you are and what's been blaring for me for the last three years is how can I be most authentic to myself - so this is the first time I am speaking about it in this way."
The episode, which started shooting yesterday and will air on May 11 on ABC and Global, is a monumental step in television culture, he says.
"From a standing outside perspective, and also as someone who is gay, I think that it's a very exciting time. How exciting that we're saying, 'This can be part of the cultural fabric, now,' because it is two series regulars, two people that you invite into your home and you see every week. It's telling of the beginning of more waves and I'm very proud of that."He does, however, note that a certain irony still exists: While a show featuring a gay marriage may be an important step toward building tolerance, it's still an attention-grabber in today's television world.
"Most importantly, in portraying gay people, the more we realize it's just like portraying anybody else and, gay marriage, it's not about two people being gay, it's about two people who love each other and who have decided to commit to each other for the exact same reasons any other couple would get married. Hopefully, the more that becomes part of the cultural awareness it won't be," he pauses and says, employing a mock, exaggerated voice of a television announcer, "a spectacular Sunday episode."
Sitting on the patio of an exclusive Hollywood hotel, wearing a grey T-shirt and red jacket, Macfarlane says he does intend to keep a certain amount of his life private. Asked if he is currently in a relationship, his answer is quick: "That is my personal life. That is where I draw the difference." He does allow though, that he would like to be married some day.
Macfarlane's road to Hollywood was relatively smooth, and mostly free of bit parts and day jobs most struggling actors undergo. Growing up with two sisters (one of which is his fraternal twin), he attended London Central Secondary School, where he was interested in maths and sciences, briefly toiling with the thought of following in his father's footsteps and becoming a doctor. He spent his summers in Cedar Springs, Ont., exploring the wilderness with friends. At Lester B. Pearson School For The Arts, Macfarlane decided to change his course.
"I was in a band when I was in high school and I was bitten by the performance bug, if anything else. I had this notion that maybe I wanted to be an actor. ... I thought it might be a neat career. I thought if I was going to try that, I should shoot for the best and I auditioned for Julliard.
"I was the only Canadian at Juilliard at the time," he says. "When you go somewhere different, you immediately have to determine yourself ... everyone made fun of me because I was like, 'I am Canadian' and it was a way to create my identity through separation, which I think a lot of Canadians do. There's a kind of integrity to being an observer of a culture. I think Canadians have that privilege innately. We are like the observers of the American culture."
Barely out of Juilliard, he was cast in off-Broadway plays, the Robert Altman miniseries Tanner on Tanner, the 2004 film Kinsey and a starring role in the 2005 Steven Bochco television series Over There. It was his stint in theatre that landed him his current television role - Brothers & Sisters creator Jon Robin Baitz saw Macfarlane on stage in the show Where Do We Live, and asked him to play Scotty Wandell, originally a guest-starring role which grew into a regular part.
"Roles tend to pick me. That's sort of where I am in my career. I've always been very lucky, especially in TV, which is something that really interests me. ... I don't turn my nose up at it like a lot of people do. There are very few things that 13 million people tune in to witness, so television is a really relevant and powerful thing."
Though he will soon be seen in the CBC miniseries Iron Road alongside Peter O'Toole and Sam Neill, Macfarlane, has little free time to pursue other roles at the moment. "[ABC] bought and paid for me as a series regular," he says with a smile, "so I will be there for a long, long time."
from The Globe And Mail

Bromances Aren't Uncommon As Guys Delay Marriage

In a 2007 episode of NBC's hospital-based comedy "Scrubs," the show's two main characters, J.D. and Turk, break into a musical duet proclaiming their mutual affection. "Guy love. That's all it is," the song goes. "Guy love, he's mine, I'm his. There's nothing gay about it in our eyes."
Turk and J.D. are two straight male doctors who are, without a doubt, in a bromance, a relationship defined as "the complicated love and affection shared by two straight males," according to urbandictionary.com.
From "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" to "Good Will Hunting," popular culture is filled with examples of straight guy love. The sitcom "Friends" often crafted jokes around the ultratight nature of Joey and Chandler's relationship, and in the 2005 film "Wedding Crashers," Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson seemed to have something more like a tortured love affair than a friendship.
But close male friendship isn't just a quirky television fantasy or a running gag in the movies. Real-life bromances are everywhere. Kevin Collier, 26, a New Jersey construction manager, has lots of manly things in common with his best friend, including but not limited to, "tattoos, motorcycles and chicks," as Collier put it. But that hasn't stopped his friends from accusing him of having a "man crush" on his best friend Don Carlo-Clauss, 28, a semiprofessional fighter whose day job is in marketing.
They first met on the wrestling team at the University of Virginia. It was a bromance founded on shared misery. "When you spend six months out of the year being miserable together, you wind up with a lot of close relationships with your teammates," said Collier.
In No Rush To Settle Down
Experts say the prevalence of these friendships can in part be explained by the delay in major life milestones. Fifty years ago, a man could graduate from college, get a job and get married all within a couple of months. But today's men are drifting, as opposed to jumping, into the traditional notion of adulthood.
"The transition to adulthood is now taking about a decade longer than it used to," said Michael Kimmel, a sociology professor at Stony Brook University in New York whose upcoming book is called "Guy Land: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men." One set of men Kimmel interviewed for the book were fraternity brothers at Dartmouth College. Following graduation, seven of them squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment in Boston.
Financial pressures help fuel bromances because they make living with a roommate a sensible option. In addition, men are getting married later — an average age of 27, according to a 2007 report by the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, up from the average marrying age of 23 in 1960. Men with more education are marrying even later, in their 30s.
David Popenoe, director of the marriage project and an emeritus professor of sociology at Rutgers, cited the acceptance of premarital sex and the greater numbers of men and women who live together as reasons for the delay in marriage.
Freedom Fuels Friendship
Men in bromances agree that when singlehood abounds, male friendships flourish. "Being single as opposed to married allows us to do things like go on these random excursions," said Joe Tipograph, 27, a graduate student at Emory University who recently spent a week in Key West with his two best friends from high school.
Tipograph, David Abrams and Greg Kopstein have a triangular bromance of sorts that began when they were kids growing up as neighbors in Rockville, Md. They went to separate colleges but reunited one summer to work as camp counselors in New Hampshire.
"Greg and I would always get in trouble, but they knew if they fired either one of us, Dave would quit," said Tipograph of how the three became a package deal. Recently Tipograph wouldn't join in a football gambling pool unless he could do so with Kopstein. Their friends dubbed them "Team Brokeback," referring to the 2006 tale of cowboy romance between Jake Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger.
Since graduating college, they've played a game of musical apartments, each having lived with the other, in one city or another, over the years.
Gay? Who Cares?
According to Peter Nardi, a sociologist at Pitzer College who specializes in male friendships, all these phrases are safer than they used to be because men are less afraid of being perceived as gay. It has become more acceptable for them to show some emotion. Al Gore and Bill Clinton hugged when they won the 1992 election and sports figures cry on camera when they're busted for steroids, Nardi pointed out.
There seems to be little worry about perceptions of homosexuality in a bromance filled with macho pursuits like drinking beer, watching sports and playing video games. But rifts can occur when serious girlfriends enter the picture or someone moves to another city. Tipograph and Kopstein both have girlfriends and make it work.
Bromancers say they keep spark alive by making an extra effort to see one another and keeping an open and honest communication. Collier and Carlo-Clauss rode Harleys from San Diego to Las Vegas together. Varellas is temporarily playing water polo professionally in Italy, while Hopkins trains just north of Los Angeles, but the two talk on the phone once a week.
Gerrity will be moving out of Mariner's apartment come fall when he heads to graduate school, and they'll be trying long distance. "We had a long talk about it," said Gerrity. "I won't see him everyday," said Mariner. "But I don't think we're going to break up our bromance."
from The Seattle Times