Were I to ever romantically target someone who is roughly the square root of my age, it would probably be Thomas Dekker.  Aside from being cute as a button (whatever that means), he’s also quite intelligent and quixotic in his approach to life.  And, let’s face it, I’m a sucker for guyliner.  But no need for me to keep my effluvient emotions in check – he’s married.  He made this announcement to let it be known that he’s gay – something I thought he did eons ago.  Apparently, back then all he did was make it clear he was sexually fluid.  What spurred him to speak now was something Bryan Fuller said when he received the Outfest Achievement Award on July 6th.  “I had a brief stint on Heroes where the gay character was ‘hetwashed’ after the actor’s management threatened to pull him from the show if he – the character, not the actor – were gay.  The character became straight and the actor came out as gay.”

Fuller made similar claims in 2007.  Dekker remembers it differently.  “I would like it to be known by everyone, that I have played a gay character three times before in my career, one when I was twelve (which is on youtube), one when I was fifteen, and another when I was seventeen.  I, nor my management have ever had any kind of problem with creating a gay character…what transpired on heroes is something far more complicated than anyone being ‘afraid’ to make Zach homosexual.”  In 2011, he elaborated on his feelings when he was told the character would come out: “I went through the fucking roof!  If you’re going to have a gay character on your show come out and be a pioneer for kids, I would’ve liked to play that from the get-go from my perspective.  I went to set and said to the writers, ‘I really wish that it wouldn’t have been five hours before I come into work that I get this news that [the character] I’d been playing for the last 12 episodes knows and is comfortable with the fact that he is gay.  Because I would’ve played this very differently.’  But I said I’d do it, and then a couple hours later the creator, Tim Kring, showed up and said, ‘No, no, no.  We’re going to change it.'”

What Dekker is upset about now is the part where Fuller said “the actor came out as gay.”  “My sexual orientation once again came into question this week when a prominent gay man used an awards acceptance speech to ‘out’ me.  While he did not mention me by name, the explicit details of his reference made it easy for the public and media to connect the dots.  While it is an odd situation, I thank him because it presents a prime opportunity for me to publicly say that I am indeed a man who proudly loves other men.  In fact, this April, I married my husband and I could not be happier.  I have never lied to the press about the fluidity of my sexuality but this man claiming that I came out is not true.  Because I have not ‘officially’ until this very moment.”