Lance Bass's New Boyfriend

As he gets ready to hit the Great White Way, Lance Bass says calling model Pedro Andrade his “boyfriend” might be a bit premature.
“He's just a friend,” Bass, 28, told Usmagazine.com during a party in his Hollywood Hills home on July 7. “We are just friends now. I guess you can say we're dating because we've been on multiple dates, but it's nothing exclusive. I'm freshly out of a relationship.”
Freshly? Bass, who begins his role as Corny Collins in the Broadway production of Hairspray on August 14, has been broken up with former Amazing Race winner Reichen Lehmkuhl for over four months. “But I've never dated in my adult gay life,” he points out. “I need to do that. Mainly I don't want to date anyone right now because I'm so focused on my career, which I haven't been for the last four years.”
His career includes a show he’s developing for Logo, MTV’s gay network, as well as a role as a wedding singer in Adam Sandler’s new movie I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. “When Adam Sandler calls and asks, ‘Will you play the wedding singer?’ you kinda have to say yes.”
And he’s excited to take on his first Broadway role. “I think it's every actor and musician's dream to do Broadway,” he says. “It the hardest job in show business—definitely the most demanding.” Still he’s quick to admit that the fact that Pedro, who is also an actor in Brazil, lives in New York, where he will be living for the next six months “so that will be convenient. He's the sweetest person ever.”
from Us Magazine

Lance Bass Joins 'Hairspray' On Broadway

Lance Bass never made it to outer space, but he will travel back in time -- to 1962, when the musical "Hairspray" is set.
The one-time 'N Sync singer joins the cast of the Broadway tuner on Aug. 14 as TV show host Corny Collins, host of a popular "American Bandstand"-style program. The musical celebrates its five-year anniversary on Broadway the next night.
Bass' Broadway bow follows that of another 'N Sync performer, Joey Fatone, who previously appeared in "Rent" and "Little Shop of Horrors." Bass will remain with "Hairspray" through Jan. 6, 2008.
Bass and his boy band pals, including Justin Timberlake, sold thousands of albums in the 1990s. With his inclusion, the Broadway cast of "Hairspray" will include four chart-topping singers: '60s singer Darlene Love, R&B smoothie Tevin Campbell and one-time O-Town lead Ashley Parker Angel.
"X-Men" actor James Marsden plays Corny Collins in the new film version of "Hairspray," opening July 20 and starring Great Neck native Nikki Blonsky as Tracy Turnblad.
from Newsday

Lance Bass To Write His Autobiography

Former boy-bander and aspiring cosmonaut Lance Bass is adding a new title to his résumé: author.
The onetime 'N Sync heartthrob, 27, plans to reveal "all about his life, his music and his sexuality" in a memoir, Out of Sync, his publisher, Simon Spotlight Entertainment (an imprint of Simon & Schuster), announced Wednesday.
The book will hit stores in October.
In it, Bass will tell readers about his childhood in small-town Mississippi, his experiences as a member of the hugely popular boy band (which started with a phone call from Justin Timberlake when Bass was 16), and, in 2002, his four months in Russia training to be a cosmonaut on a space mission (though he was forced to drop out because of a lack of funds).
He will also talk about his life as a gay man, including his struggle to keep his sexuality hidden from fans and his decision to come out of the closet on the cover of PEOPLE in July.
from Teen People

Reichen Speaks Out On Attacks By Perez Hilton

Mario Lavendeira (PerezHilton.com) is a Big (blank) Ugly Liar, an Accused Thief and Criminal

All,
From the Horse's Mouth: Just a friendly reminder that when you read websites like PerezHilton.com, you are reading lies and are being taken advantage of as you make more money for a person who does nothing but fabricate storeis to make his site look interesting.
That anyone would trust someone like Mario Lavendeira (PerezHilton.com) who STEALS from photographers, bloggers, and the general population, is beyond me, really. This person is a common criminal.
Contrary to what this ugly wind-bag has reported, I have not broken up with my boyfriend. I did not go home with anyone from "Survivor" from any party. I have not "made out with" anyone at a party while I have been with my boyfriend. The opposite has been written on his site. It is all a complete and blantant lie. This person is a liar. Period.
My book was done before I ever met Lance. I do not date people so that I can "use" them. I'm self-sufficient and happy to be that way. I have served my country, I have made my own money, my own career, written my own books, bought my own homes and other possesions, and I'm proud to be this way, on my own. I am not broke. I am individually financially sound. I date people because I happen to love them. Period.
I will only post this once. This disgusting person and his site makes up blatant lies to create interesting stories. I am one of this criminal's targets. Understand that. So know, from here on out, that if you read anything about ME on PerezHilton.com, you are 99.9% sure to be reading a lie or an exagerrated, incorrect version of something that is 0.01% true.

Merry Christmas Everybody!!

Love, Reichen

P.S. Here is some information on "Perez" and how he stole a check from a friend and deposited into his account while he was using CRYSTAL METH. This guy is a drug addict, criminal, and thief.
"Perez Hilton, of PageSixSixSix fame--but whose real name shall remain verboten because, unlike him, I have some tact--is a total thief.
He got run out of L.A. because he is a meth addict and a thief. The boy had the gumption to steal a check from a friend's apartment and then deposit it into his own account as a third-party check. Like his ass wouldn't get caught.
But tina makes you do stupid things. He did get caught, though I'm not sure what happened with his court case. This happened like eight months ago.
Check fraud, forgery, theft. Then his blog takes off and people in L.A. started posting comments to it about the theft. He deletes them all.
So you heard it here first. If he gets any more famous, tell people not to let Perez get too close to your dresser drawers, because if he is cracked he will steal from you regardless of the consequences."
from Reichen's MySpace

Perez Hilton Reports That Lance And Reichen Have Split

It saddens us to report this, but....
PerezHilton.com can exclusively reveal that Lance Bass and his boyfriend, Reichen, have decided to end their relationship.
The split - which happened very recently - was a mutual decision, pals of the couple tell us.
"They had been fighting a lot lately," says one source. "They tried a lot of things to make it work - even opening up the relationship - but they would just fight all the time towards the end. It wasn't working."
How sad! Goodbye to one of the few high-profile gay couples we had!
At least we still have Do Me Howser.
from PerezHilton.com

Perez Hilton's Open-Closet Policy

The white-hot center of the celebrity gossip world is currently a back table at a heavily trafficked Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Sunset Boulevard, just west of Fairfax. There, Perez Hilton, a slightly pudgy, recently blonded 28-year-old Cuban American blogger, has leveraged his reign as "queen of all media" to become a one-man celebrity outing operation, doing his best to uncloset as many gay celebrities as he can, because, as he sees it, they have forfeited their right to privacy on that point.
"In American culture, a lot of people still think that being gay is bad, and that being gay will hurt your career. I generally don't think that," said Hilton, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira. He began using his made-up Web moniker full time after getting death threats from Clay Aiken fans who didn't appreciate Hilton's calling the singer Clay Gay-kin. (Aiken has denied being gay.)
Styling himself a "gossip gangsta," Hilton picks heroes and villains (Angelina Jolie = good, Jennifer Aniston = bad), elevates obscure figures to fame (the bodaciously endowed British model Jordan) and never tires of ragging on Lindsay Lohan, of whom he delights in posting vulgar photographs.
But it is the absolutely brutal way he demands that gay actors avow their sexuality, coupled with the huge readership of his site, that is something of a departure, even in the rough-and-tumble world of celebrity blogs.
"I am not some safe, cookie cutter, queer-eye-for-the-straight-guy homo," said Hilton, who pings between comedy and gross vulgarity on his site. "I am dangerous. I am gonna push the envelope. I am gonna be who I am: a loud, gay Latino that has opinions and in my own way, subserviently, I am trying to make the world a better place."
It is true that Hilton does not take credit for the recent spate of revelations by the actors Neil Patrick Harris and T.R. Knight and the former 'N Sync band member Lance Bass. But, at least with Bass and Harris, Hilton kept up a drumbeat about their sexual orientation. Some think the relentless attention may have played a part in their decisions. He agreed, up to a point.
"I am never gonna take ownership of someone's coming out — that's their moment, and their decision," Hilton said Tuesday evening, twisting his baseball cap around as he sat at his "desk" in the Coffee Bean with his indispensable laptop and pink Sidekick. "I will say that I may be leading the conversation, and I might grease the wheel and make it easier for them."
Even serious-minded thinkers on the subject do not disagree. "Nowadays, it's the blogs that get it going," said USC professor Larry Gross, author of "Contested Closets: The Politics and Ethics of Outing." "In the previous round of outing in the early '90's, everybody wanted to be first to be second. No one wanted to take the heat for starting it, but the blog phenomenon has changed that by lowering the threshold to the point that other media can't avoid it. What we are now seeing is Outing 2.0"
This year, Hilton practically trilled, "there have been six — well, 5 1/2 if you count Ted Haggard — notable people that have come out as gay or lesbian, by choice or not." In addition to Knight, Harris and Bass, he cites ex-Florida Rep. Mark Foley and a TV actress who has not publicly acknowledged she is gay.
In 2004, Hilton added, there was only one notable gay person who stepped out of the closet: James McGreevey, who resigned as governor of New Jersey when he came out. "It's gone from one to 5 1/2 ," said Hilton. "Wow, wow, wow. That's progress, whether we like it or not."
With more than 2.5 million hits a day on the site, Hilton wields tremendous power. "I don't want to sound full of myself, but if I had not been talking about Lance Bass as much as I was before he came out, there is no way he would have gotten the cover of People magazine. He would have gone about it the traditional way, coming out on the cover of the Advocate, which is read by 70,000 people instead of the 3.4 million who read People every week. So I offered him this silver platter, you could say."
Still, in the arena of true breakthroughs, said Gross, the gay world is still waiting for its Jackie Robinson equivalent, an A-lister who would make it OK for others to come out. In that regard, he said, Hilton's efforts are "salutary, because we are still living in a double-standard world ... where there is something shameful about sexuality. The fact that someone is gay only will become neutral information when it's treated that way, not as a bombshell revelation or a dirty story."
Hilton already operates as though that is the case. He wishes that gay celebrities who don't want to talk about their private lives could just say, "Yes, I am gay and I don't want to talk about my private life."
He does not own a TV or read books and has no Internet at home. He is a voracious consumer of magazines, though, and has a network of trusted friends and tipsters who, he said, have yet to lead him astray.
He starts work around 6:30 a.m., sometimes posting 30 times a day, a far more prodigious output than many fully staffed sites. By sheer energy and personality, his site and he are rapidly evolving into a brand. He is in demand by radio and TV outlets as a celebrity commentator. He recently taught a Learning Annex class, "How to Blog Your Way to Fame and Fortune." ("I inspired myself!" he said.)
Collaborating with the production company World of Wonder, Hilton will star in his own reality show. He is the subject of a four-page layout in December's GQ, will co-host MTV's New Year's Eve special, will appear on the cover of the Advocate next month and was just named to a list of 25 powerful Latinos by the New York Post, which sued him in May 2005 for trademark dilution, among other things, prompting him to rechristen his original website, Pagesixsixsix (it's now called perezhilton .com). "I guess they didn't find the name funny," said Hilton.
Hilton is also smart enough to know that his current good fortune could be fleeting and is working 19 hours a day to make sure it stays. After all, it was only last year that this lower-middle-class, Jesuit-schooled kid from Miami was unemployed, $60,000 in debt, in bankruptcy and deeply depressed. Today, he said, he earns six figures. He has agents, a lawyer, a manager and a public that, despite its craving for the content he provides, can be vicious toward him in comments on his site. Which he loves. "Every time they leave a comment, it's a page view," he said. "I'm laughing all the way to the bank."
He moved to Los Angeles full time in 2002, after graduating from New York University, where he studied acting. While looking in vain for acting gigs, he was hired as a publicist, but didn't like the clients. "The last straw was this 40-year-old single mother who came out with a mermaid bikini calendar. It was her in a mermaid tail, and I was like, 'Oh, my God, this lady is like too old for this. But hey, I was resourceful…. I booked her at Long Beach aquarium!"
He was hired by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination, overseeing newsletters and annual reports. "I don't think I am their favorite person right now," he said.
A spokesman for GLAAD was diplomatic. "Media speculation about a celebrity's orientation is not something we support and it can be problematic," said Damon Romine. "Whether you are a celebrity or not, coming out is ultimately a personal process."
After Hilton left GLAAD, he freelanced for gay publications and found work at the Star briefly before being fired. Combining his three failed occupations — actor, publicist, journalist — he has struck gold.
"Next year will be one of two things," he said. "I am gonna fall or it'll be even bigger and better and crazier than this amazing year has been. I am hoping bigger and better, but I'm prepared for the other one too."
from The Los Angeles Times

Reichen Lehmkuhl Says He Was Sexually Assaulted In The Air Force

Reichen Lehmkuhl is perhaps best known for dating pop star Lance Bass of N'Sync fame or winning a $1 million on the adventure reality show "The Amazing Race." But before Lehmkuhl's name hit celebrity magazines, he was an Air Force captain living with a secret: He is gay.
And as far back as he can remember, Lehmkuhl had dreams of being in the Air Force.
"It was a childhood dream to fly, and then it came more of an adult dream to not just fly but to … [go to] the Air Force Academy and to be an officer, to be a leader in the U.S. Air Force," he told ABC News.
But Lehmkuhl said when he entered the Air Force Academy, he was living with the secret of his sexuality.
"And I remember the panic that came over me at that moment realizing, 'What am I going to do? Am I going to be able to change this? How can I admit this?' " he said.
"And it was all happening just within me, all internal 'cause I couldn't talk to anybody about it," he said.
While the 1993 "don't ask, don't tell" policy prohibited military personnel to question fellow soldiers about their sexual orientation, Lehmkuhl said it offered little protection for a gay captain hoping to maintain his privacy and his dignity.
"There was definitely an institutionalized acceptance of people being homophobic and telling gay jokes and making homophobic remarks -- really, really mean homophobic remarks to the point of, 'Kill gay people,' " he said.
Speculation grew about Lehmkuhl"s sexual orientation until one night, when he said he was sent a message. He said he was sexually assaulted by the people he served beside everyday.
"A bag was put over my head," he said. "I was stripped of my clothes. I was forced to do things sexually with two other male cadets."
Lehmkuhl said that night he hit rock bottom and considered ending his life.
"That's when you start having suicidal thoughts, and that's when you start saying, 'Oh my God. I am so stuck in this situation. I can't go to anyone,' " he said.
He kept silent about the incident, and served out his commitment to the Air Force.
Since his departure from the Air Force Academy five years ago, Lehmkuhl's fortunes have changed for the better.
He won $1 million after taking first place in season four of the reality adventure show, "The Amazing Race."
Now, the 32 year old works as a model and actor.
He said he's in a stable relationship with former pop star, Lance Bass, who admitted that he is gay back in July.
"I'm really proud of Lance," Lehmkuhl said. "I'm really proud of the way he has handled everything. And a lot of what I saw in what he dealt with in coming out are things that I dealt with when I came in the public eye."
Lehmkuhl now hopes his story will help prompt the military to take a more critical look at the policy on gays -- a policy, he said, that is simply failing.
from ABC News

Billie Jean King Out To Win

High-profile people who come out as gay or lesbian often script those announcements, like former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's "I am a gay American" news conference in 2004 or singer Lance Bass' "I'm Gay" People magazine cover this summer.
But one of the most iconic lesbians in the world -- tennis legend Billie Jean King -- has never made such a statement. She was sued by a former lover for palimony in 1981 and held a news conference, with her husband at her side, where she confirmed that she had indeed had an affair with a woman a decade before, but she did not address her own sexual orientation.
King had a new female lover at that time -- whom she is still with -- but she remained married to her husband for six more years. In an autobiography written "under duress," she now says, in 1982, King wrote, "Obviously, I must be bisexual." She did not come out to her parents until she was 51.
This Wednesday is National Coming Out Day, and King, who was in San Francisco at the end of September to receive an award from the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society, spoke about her exit from the closet.
"I think you're really only out when you come out on your own terms, and I wasn't totally out, probably," said King, who is now 62 and identifies as a lesbian. "I think ... when I really felt I could say that with all honesty would be when Larry and I got divorced (in 1987), because my actions were matching my words."
While King's role in shaping the history of tennis and women's athletics is well established -- the USTA National Tennis Center in New York was renamed for her at this year's U.S. Open -- she has yet to play on the center court of the gay rights movement.
She wants to change that, though, and has recently met with several national leaders.
"I'm planning the next three to five years of my life in the next few months. I'd like to make a difference in the community," King said.
A host of famous and semi-famous people recently have published books about their own coming out. McGreevey is touring the country now -- he will be in San Francisco at the end of this week. Former NFL player Esera Tuaolo and Canadian swimmer Mark Tewksbury recently wrote their tales. Bass, who was a member of the musical group 'N Sync, is reportedly working on one, too.
The books' themes are much the same: the emotional toll of hiding same-sex attractions, the challenge of seeing oneself fitting into a heterosexually dominant world -- both in and out of the closet -- and the feeling of freedom gained from being open about one's sexuality.
King plans to write another autobiography -- her third -- and said that while it is better for people to be honest, she would "never out somebody -- ever, ever, ever." The palimony lawsuit filed against King, which ultimately was thrown out, resulted in her being dropped by several sponsors and cost her millions in endorsement dollars.
"I was outed at 37 and I was retiring,'' King said, in her matter-of-fact tone.
"I didn't have any place to go get any money, and I had to go out and play two more years because I didn't have any money for lawyers. It was rough.
"A person is only ready when they're ready. That's it. And nobody should make a judgment on somebody else. We can never walk a mile in somebody's shoes; we don't know their pain level; we don't know what they're feeling; we don't know what happened to them; we don't know."
For King, had it happened a decade earlier, when she began the affair and was organizing the first women's tennis tour, she believes it would have doomed the sport.
"If I had been out, we probably wouldn't have women's professional tennis the way you know it today,'' she maintains. "That's a little pressure, baby. It's a lot more pressure than most people realized was going on."
After founding the WTA Tour, she went on to beat Bobby Riggs in 1973 in the "Battle of the Sexes'' match, then co-founded World Team Tennis and the Women's Sports Foundation.
During the interview, King answered questions as if she were chasing down shots on a tennis court. Her energy was palpable; she rarely sat still, repeated phrases for emphasis and lobbed questions back at me. As a photographer took pictures, King wore a blue blazer that matched her pants, but shed it as soon as the camera went away and sat comfortably in a T-shirt.
She is the quintessential coach -- she improved Martina Navratilova's game considerably in the early 1990s -- and excels at competitive strategies. For the gay rights movement, that means focusing entirely on winning legal rights, she said.
King owns the World Team Tennis organization with her partner, Ilana Kloss, but they cannot offer insurance benefits for domestic partners because the business employs fewer than 50 people.
Such disparities should be highlighted without invoking religious arguments about homosexuality, King said.
"When you get into religion, you cannot win," she said, adding that she is a "big believer in the separation of church and state, and I think we need to keep that."
San Francisco's GLBT Historical Society gave King the Walker Award, named for the society's first gay history archivist, Willie Walker. The award honors people who have made significant contributions to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.
King's partner did not attend -- the two met up in Los Angeles the next day -- and it is only recently that King has started referring to Kloss by name. Kloss had objected to King talking publicly about her sexuality, King said.
Like many gay and lesbian people, King had the most difficulty in coming out to her parents. Her childhood home in Long Beach was intolerant of homosexuality, and King feared her parents might end their relationship with her if she pushed it.
She danced around the topic with her father and her mother, who would leave the room each time King got close to the point of talking frankly with them. Her parents understood their daughter's relationship, she said, but she never got to where she could "just really say it, really get it out, really cry."
"Then I got to a point with a therapist where the therapist said, 'You know, you've given all your power to your parents. When are you ready to get your power back?' And when she said that, I heard her -- we hear things when we're ready -- and I heard her. That's when I was 51 and said I have to be willing to lose my parents and that's OK."
Her parents did not reject King, and she was surprised that her father -- who died this year and was the source of the homophobia in her childhood home -- handled the transition better than her mother.
With her parents' acceptance -- and her partner's permission to speak freely -- King said the nightmare that was her closet has completely disappeared.
"I'm in such a different place. I'm in such a different place I don't believe it," she said. "I'm finally comfortable in my own skin."
In that spirit, King refuses to have laser surgery on her eyes because she likes kids who have to wear eyeglasses to see her doing the same. She usually carries four pairs of glasses, she said, and has her favorite frames in three colors. The thick frames she wore for many of her most important tennis matches were donated to a charity for the visually impaired in New York.
"I should probably start saving some of them for the archives," she said, making herself laugh.
from The San Francisco Chronicle

I Had No Idea Lance Was Gay

Former Boy Meets World actress Danielle Fishel had no idea her then-boyfriend Lance Bass was gay when the pair dated in the late 1990s. Ex-'N SYNC singer Bass revealed he is gay in July (06) and is currently in a relationship with reality show winner Reichen Lehmkuhl from The Amazing Race. And Fishel, 25, was as surprised as anybody when Bass 'came out.' She says, "I was 17 and I thought he was amazing. I still do, he's one of my closest friends. He's great. "We ended up just breaking up, our schedules were different. "At the time I did not know, even though people had been saying things to me like, 'Do you think maybe...?' and I was like, 'No!' "He was living the life he thought he needed to be living and I'm just so happy for him now that he is now living the life he deserves to live."
from Contact Music