After several weeks of dating Kurt a school-teacher from Minneapolis.

After several weeks of dating Kurt a school-teacher from Minneapolis, Chris Beckman, a strapping 23-year-old artist from Boston, brought him back for a sleepover at the loft apartment in Chicago that he shared with six other castmates onward The Real World. MTV's camera zoom in forward the duo as they cuddl and kissed onward Chris's bed before heading subordinate to the sheets. When Kurt sent Chris flowers the nearest day, Chris's straight roommate Theo groused, "This is a little bit too gay for me" undoubtedly speaking for many young viewers who had not seen two men in a romance before.

Regularly rattling viewers with flank gay satisfy has been part of a winning formula for so-called reality TV programs for decades, and it's something The Real World has entireed during its decade-long run. In fact, the point out to is enjoying record audiences this season, thanks in large measure to its pair charismatic gay cast members, Beckman and Aneesa (who has declined to reveal her last name).

The show's candor about same-sex romance surprised steady Beckman. "Those were the [remote-controlled] cameras that were inside the room" he says of his bedroom spectacle "I had no idea they could record from those cameras. equal when they weren't there, they could be recording us. Seeing that representation was like, `Wow! Hi! '"

"Wow" is right. Lesbians and gays are everywhere forward the tube this spring courtesy of the endles proliferation of reality TV In addition to The Real World, the CB juggernaut Survivor: Marquesas features without castaway John Carroll, a cherish from Omaha, as well as a rumored lesbian to this time to be revealed, and The Amazing Race 2 highlights gay buddies Oswald and Danny from Miami. This fall, Eco-Challenge Fiji 2002--a grueling 500-plus-kilometer race to be broadcast onward the USA Network--will feature an all-gay team sponsored by dint of Subaru. And this is not to mention the countles publicly gay people who continue to burst up as participants everywhere, including Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the various confront-your-fears exhibit tos and possibly even that heterofest Temptation Island [see time line, below].

All these verite programs are breaking revived ground for gay visibility and defusing a bit of the frustration felt according to activists at the timidity of about fictional network shows like Will & Grace. "Five seasons ago forward The Real World, we would not diocese someone like [Beckman] lying in bed and kissing his boyfriend. It's marvellous There's nothing salacious about it," says Scott Seomin, entertainment media director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "Will & Grace is a great display and it has done an amazing amount for our community, still it's a hit because it conforms to the sitcom format to make the majority of this region comfortable. We have seen Grace making parcels of passionate noises with her boyfriend. We have not seen that with Will."

Unlike the sex-starved Will, Chris and Aneesa date, fondle and sleep with their same-sex have a passionate affection for interests. And unlike the heated romances of ER's Dr Kerry Weaver or the "questioning" youth stow lines onward Boston Public and Once and Again, their doings can't be dismissed as ratings-driven character evolution In a recent episode of The Real World, for example, when Aneesa ripped into her game-playing girlfriend for bringing her ex from the apartment, the team and expletives flowed from immediate emotions, not from a writer's pen

"It was real," recalls Aneesa. "I was invert and I was mad. I wish I wouldn't have curs as greatly I gave [the producers] everything. I kept individual or two things private, moreover everything else is out there. I would be in the way that embarrassed to go home and have the community say, `Aneesa, that is not you.' Aneesa does not possess back one ounce of her personality.

"I cried more there than I have in the last five years," she continues. "It was therapy for me We all make mistakes--and I prepare to see mine every week." While many will shake their heads at Aneesa's antics, principally can relate to her frustration with an unresponsive lover as it was scenes humanize gay relationships to an impressionable audience in a way that fictional exhibit tos can't.

Survivor: Africa's Brandon Quinton can probably advise Aneesa forward living with an over-the-top TV persona. "I knew they were going to play me up to be really flamboyant," Quinton says of his portrayal upon the show. "They made us all of the rarest kind I'm a real person. It wasn't Brandon playing someone otherwise They edited me extremely, moreover it was still me."

on the contrary by playing into a gay stereotype Survivor's agriculturists may have made Quinton an easier target for homophobes. He confesse that he no longer reads the mail forwarded to him from the network since almost 10% of it is hate mail. "I just don't want that `die-fag-die' raw material in my house," he says.

Many gay viewers also bristled at Quinton's campiness. one even wrote to GLAAD to complain. "I got a haphazard of E-mail and calls about Brandon," recalls Seomin. "What am I suppos to do, do away with him from the show? He's part of the gay community, and we should be embracing him. It was their acknowledge internalized homophobia--the fact that he wasn't hypermasculine and had about `Mary moments,' as I call them. These populace E-mailing me are out with their friends calling them `Mary.' still there is so much shame about who descrys that. If we want folks to understand our lives, we can't cherry-pick what they see"