Luke Benward: Fried worms, Disney movies, Christian music, gay friends, a j/o video, and a n*de Cameron Monaghan

How to Eat Fried Worms (Thomas Rockwell, 1973) is one of the classic novels of my childhood: Billy brags that he can eat anything, so when his friend Alan offers him $50 to eat a worm a day for 15 days...  He can prepare them any way he wants, but Alan will provide the worms. The parents are in on the scheme, there is no bullying involved, each of the boys has a buddy-bonding best friend, and the only girl is Billy's sister.  No one wins the Girl of His Dreams.

 Remembering the buddy-bonds and the absence of the heterosexist trajectory, I eagerly tuned in to the Disney Channel version (2006).  But now Billy (Luke Benward) is confronted by a gang of  bullies led by Joe (Adam Hicks), he fors a group of friend instead of a special buddy, and there is a Girl of His Dreams.  

A rather disappointing start to Luke Benward's career.  Let's see if he has redeemed himself since with some gay roles.

According to the IMDB, Luke was born in 1995 in Franklin, Tennesse.  

He first appeared on screen playing Mel Gibson's son in We Were Soldiers (2002).  

The infamous homophobe Mel Gibson?  That's even worse. 

After roles in the revamped Family Affair (2002) and Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), Luke hit Disney gold with Fried Worms (2006).  

His Disney stardom assured, he continued with Mostly Ghostly (2007): A shy boy (Sterling Beaumon) encounters a a ghost boy (Luke) and his sister, who has a crush on him.  He must figure out how they died before it's too late, and win the Girl of His Dreams. 

Left: Luke and Sterling Beamon strangling Miles Heizer.  Neither has actually worked with Miles Heizer.  Maybe they're friends?

Minutemen (2008): A teen nerd (Luke), his buddy, and the Girl Next Door become time travelers, allowing him to best the obnoxious jock who is dating the Girl of His Dreams. Guess who he ends up with.

Dog Gone (2008): A boy (Luke) rescues a dog from bumbling thieves, bests the school bully (Cameron Monaghan, left),  and wins the Girl of His Dreams.

Things are not looking good for you, Luke Baby.

Let's skip past Girl v Monster and Zombies and Cheerleaders to Luke's first major tv role in Good Luck Charlie (2013).  Charlie is a girl, not a boy, and she doesn't bring good luck; she's the subject of a video diary filmed by her father.  Luke plays Beau Landry, an employee at Bob's Bugs Be Gone who meets, falls in love with, and eventually becomes the boyfriend of Teddy (another girl.  What's with this show?).

Ok, what about Ravenswood (2013-14), a teen mystery series featuring dark secrets in a small town?  Luke plays Dillon Sanders, who is dating focus character Olivia but is secretly plotting to prevent her from discovering the dark secrets.  Oh, and he kills her father.  That sort of ends the relationship.

Cloud 9 (2014): A snowboarder and her obnoxious boyfriend are trained by snowboarding great Will Cloud (Luke).  The boyfriend gets dumped, and...well you know the rest.

Measure of a Man (2018): Dude gets a girlfriend.

Life of the Party (2018): Middle-aged Deanna, newly dumped by her husband, returns to college, and has s*x with a fratboy (Luke), who becomes obsessed with her.  Guess what?  He's the son of the woman Deanna was dumped for. 

I'm tired of this.  Let's see what else Luke has been up to.

He's done some music, such as the theme song for Cloud 9, and he has appeared in the music videos of several other artists, including Martina McBride and Jason Aldean.  

Wait -- he's the son of Christian country-western singer Aaron Benward, shown here with his boyfriend...um, I mean singing partner Scott Reeves -- and the grandson of Christian music producer Jeoffrey Benward.  They have won Dove Awards, and Jeoffrey was inducted into Christian Music Hall of Fame.  Why didn't anyone tell me this before?  Luke Baby is too fundamentalist to play a gay character, and if he's gay in real life, he's got to be extremely closeted.

According to the  Who's Dated Who website, Luke has been in several relationships with women, and is currently dating Ariel Winter (Alex Dumphy on Modern Family).  You know there were gay characters on that show, right?

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Ben and Matt Royer: Disney /Nick teencom twins grow up, become journalists, one dates guys. With Matt and bf d*cks

 

If you were watching the Disney Channel or Nickelodeon between 2015 and 2020, you saw twin brothers Ben and Matt Royer.  They were everywhere, playing conniving, mischievous, silly, or virtuous twins.

The brothers were born in Tarzana, California in 2003 and began acting in 2013, playing Vince and Vance Hodges in the sports comedy Back in the Game.  Griffin Gluck also appeared.

Next came the Nickelodeon teencom 100 Things to Do Before High School (2015-16) had the standard three friends, white male (Owen Patrick Joyner), black male (Jaheem Toombs), and female, giving advice like "say yes to everything for a day," "stay up all night," "adopt a flour baby," "meet your idol," and "get your heart pre-broken."  Ben and Matt played Benji and Enzo Froman. 

Chazz Nittolo played Gorgeous Eighth Grade Boy. In 2025, he's 25 years old.  Not bad.

While working on 100 Things, the twins were cast on the Disney Channel's Best Friends Whenever (2015-16): Two teenage girls and their buddy Barry (Gus Kamp) jump back in time, mostly to the recent past so they can determine why their new lab partner is a jerk or Barry can meet his science hero. Ben and Matt play Brett and Chet Marcus, the younger brothers of one of the girls, with crushes on the other. 

I don't know if the actor Gus Kamp (left) is the same as the trans singer August Kamp.

A lot of twin guest spots followed, including episodes of Pickles & Peanut (as Crabmeat and Umbrella), White Famous (Milo and Otis),The Guest Book (Henry and Hank), and Night Court (as Grant and Brant)

Ben also got non-twin roles on Young Sheldon and American Born Chinese, and in the movie The Happytime Murders (2018).

The twins hosted a podcast, Twinger Talk, where they interviewed celebrities.  I don't recognize the names of their guests, but the top photo looked cute: Jerry Hairston, a baseball player.

Plus they supported a variety of charities, like an anti-bullying initiative and YSB Now ("You're So Beautiful" Now).

They graduated from UCLA in 2024, Ben majoring in Communications and Matt in Political Science.  In 2025 they received their M.A. degrees from the Annenberg School of Journalism at USC. 

Ben (no beard) is now a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and Matt (beard) a graduate fellow at ABC News in New York.  I imagine that they don't have a lot of time for acting.

You're probably wondering: 

1. Are they gay?

2. Any n*de photos?

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit.

Regan Burns: "Dog with a Blog," obstacle courses, gay erasure, and Big Dick Mitch. With an alpha male d*ck

 

Regan Burns, who plays Big Dick Mitch in Righteous Gemstones Episode 4.8, is best known as a comedic actor.  He has appeared in 3rd Rock from the Sun, Malcolm in the Middle, How I Met Your Mother, Weeds, and 2 Broke Girls.

His most substantial role is Bennett, the father of the family in the Disney Channel's Dog with a Blog (2012-15)

He's also a personal trainer and running coach.  He didn't say who his partner is.

He sells the Hyrox Physical Fitness Challenge, which caters your race to your physical fitness level. 

I filled out their questionnaire:

Hhow often do you work out (every day)

What distance do you like to run (5k)

How many pushups can you do in a set (30)

It said I should do a pro race, but I'm not doing nearly as much as someone with that physique.

Regan also enjoys obstacle course racing, like the Grit OCR, which you complete with a partner.  It involves obstacles like Dennis the Menace (using a slingshot), Flip this House (flipping giant boxes),  and Out of Gas (carrying heavy cans up mountains).

Regan's partner here is Aaron Cobia, a "husband, dad, and mountain climber."

I hate it when they brag about being heterosexual in their first line.  And it doesn't even work, Buddy: here are gay husbands and fathers.    

More after the break. Caution: Explicit

Jason Maybaum: Is the gay-vague son on "Raven's Home" gay in real life? With some Disney Descendants and Jake Green's goods

 

In 2021, I reviewed an episode of Raven's Home (2017-2023), the Disney channel update of That's So Raven, in which the girl with psychic powers grows up and moves in with her frenemy Chelsea, and they raise their kids together.  I didn't realize at the time that Raven Simone, an out lesbian in a same-sex marriage, refused to make Raven gay!  Disney offered, she refused!  Friggin' Uncle Tom, complicit in the heteronormative erasure of LGBT people -- including lesbians, darn it!

Chelsea's son Levi (Jason Maybaum, left, with costar Isaac Ryan Brown) is a femme boy, an aspiring actor, cast as the gay-subtext Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet.  Mom says "I'm proud of you, no matter what," which is usually what parents say to avoid saying "even if you're gay." And he never expresses any interest in girls in any episode -- I checked.  Due to Raven's insistence on heteronormative erasure, he couldn't be canonically gay, but -- and the writers -- certainly piled on the gay subtexts.  Could Jason be gay in real life?   

Jason was born on August 31, 2007, and began his acting career in commercials in 2014, when he was seven years old.

He played the son in The Perfect Stanleys (2015), about a stay-at-home mom whose life is "perfect."

A bratty kid who criticizes Ders' museum purchases in an episode of Workaholics (2016)

A commercial kid who terrorizes sports great Frank Cushman (Jerry O'Connell) in an episode of the mockumentary series The Fifth Quarter (2016).

Left: Jake Green, who plays the moderator of the mockumentary, if he's the right one.  If not, just realax and look at his abs.  

And now back to Jason:

The son in Bitch (2017), about a woman who snaps and thinks she's a dog (say what?).

The bratty son of Superstore manager Glen (2017).

A student in Teachers (2017), with Ryan Caltagirone (left) as Hot Dad.

The son in Desperate Waters (2019), with Matthew Lawrence taking a male-female couple on a "three hour tour" (not really; reference to Gilligan's Island).

The son in...well, you get the idea.  A lot of sons.  Let's try some of Jason's when he was a teenager, after Raven's Home.

 

Since Raven, Jason has mostly done voiceover work: Wolfboy and the Everything Factory (2021-22), Spidey and his Amazing Friends (2022-23), Ridley Jones (2023).

Plus a lot of singing and dancing.

His only recent live-action role seems to be Cameron in Descendants 3 (2021), which the IMDB says is about competitive dancers in Los Angeles, but Wikipedia says is an animated film featuring the children and grandchildren of Disney villains: Booboo Stewart (descended from Jafar), Mitchell Hope (left, Beauty and the Beast), Dylan Playfair (Gaston --wait, wasn't he gay?)....

More after the break

Blake Michael: The "Dog with a Blog" brother starts a band, stalks a teacher, vanishes into corporate. With Blake and Dano dicks

 

I haven't been watching Disney Channel programs regularly since the days of Hannah Montana, so all I heard of Dog with a Blog (2012-15) was buzz about how ridiculous the premise was: three kids discover that their dog is sentient, can talk, and actually has a blog where he discusses his experiences and tries to find other dogs.  How is that more ridiculous than a pop star pretending to be a regular girl, both daughters of a famous country-western music singer, and no one suspecting for an instant?

Critics lambasted the show for its "lackluster writing' and absence of any actual blogging, but it averaged 3 million viewers in the first season, and was nominated for three Emmies.  The main players appear to be Chloe and Avery, two tween sisters from a blended family, but there was also a teenage brother, Tyler (Blake Michael).

Plus Dad Bennett (Regan Burns) and Avery's enemy/crush (L.J. Benet), who now has abs but smiling smugly as girls in bikinis surround him. 

Besides, I haven't found any n*de photos of L.J.  But there are some of Blake.

Blake got his start in modeling at age three, and had his first on-screen role at age eight, playing a restaurant patron in Chosen (2004).  Small parts in October Road, Out of Jimmy's Head, and The Mortician followed.

He had a starring role in Lemonade Mouth (2011), which I never saw because I thought the term referred to some kind of terminal cancer.  It's actually the name of a bad that five high schoolers who start a band -- I guess disgusting names are de rigeur for rock bands.  The boys are Charlie (Blake) and Wen (Adam Hicks).  Both get girlfriends, and the remaining girl gets a boyfriend, and so on, and so on.  Heteronormativity fulfilled. 

Sorry, this is the only photo I could find where the two guys are together, not bookending the three girls.

It's a little tangential, but Adam Hicks is known as one of the Disney Channel's skateboarding dudebros on Zeke and Luther (2009-12).  His partner, Hutch Dano, has retired from acting to become a painter.

And post photos of his d*ck (after the break).

Jason Marsden: Second hottest of the Short Guy Brigade, Steve Smith, Max Goof, and Robin. With Marsden dicks

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Ethan Wacker: The former teen spy, Bizaardvark manager, and Vanderbilt fratboy looks good in a suit. And out of a suit.

I only knew three things about Ethan Wacker before beginning the research: 

1. At 5'7", he's a member of the Short Guy Brigade

2. He has an amazing physique.

3. He has a lot of male friends.  

A lot of male friends.

Actually, I'm getting tired of posting photos of Ethan and his male friends.  Let's check his biography.

Born in Connecticut in 2002, moved to South Korea and then to Hawaii.

His acting credits begin in 2006 (at the age of four!) with a video game called Papa Louie: When Pizza Attacks

More video games and animation followed, plus two episodes of the teencom KC Undercover (2015-18), a Disney Channel teencom about "an outspoken and confident technology whiz and skilled black belt" who becomes a spy.   Ethan played the son of the Vice President of the U.S. 

Then he appeared in Hawaii Five-0, See Plum Run, Tour of Mythicality, and 63 episodes of Bizaardvark (2016-2019).  

More after the break. Caution: Explicit.

Moises Arias: Rico on "Hannah Montana," grows up to play gay characters and show his bum, but is he actually gay? With a hung O'Hearn

 

In 2006, the Disney channel premiered Hannah Montana, about a teenage girl who is secretly a pop star (just go with it).  Hannah was surrounded by a coterie of hunks and hunkoids, including her father Robby (Billy Ray Cyrus), her brother Jackson (Jason Earle), her buddy Oliver (Mitchell Musso), her crush Jake (Cody Linley) -- and Rico Suave (Moises Arias), the billionaire's son, schemer, and prankster who ran Rico's Surf Shop and various other business enterprises.  

Rico's love/hate relationship with Jackson, his employee and classmate, eventually turned to love: they became best friends.  Maybe they were dating in real life, too.  Or maybe Moises was dating Ryan Ochoa, or Jaiden Smith, Will Smith's nonbinary and probably pansexual child.

By the time the series ended in 2011, Moises had become the best and brightest of the Short Guy Brigade: 5'1", muscular, cute, and "obviously" gay.

After Hannah, Moises concentrated on movies and tv shows with gay subtext buddy-bonds or even LGBTQ characters:

In The Kings of Summer (2013), two teenage boys, including Gabriel Basso (left), and their nonbinary, agendered friend Biaggio (Moises) decide to spend the summer together in the wilderness. 

I didn't see Ender's Game (2013), since it was based on a book by homophobic Orson Scott Card, but the plot synopsis suggests a love-hate relationship between far-future space captain Bonzo Madrid (Moises) and Ender (Asa Butterfield).

The Land (2016) features four teenage boys who want to be skateboard champs.

In Ben-Hur (2016), Moises plays Dismas, a Jewish zealot who tries to kill Pontius Pilate from Ben-Hur's balcony.  The guards arrest Ben-Hur, of course, but he loves Dismas too much to betray him.

In Five Feet Apart (2019), he plays a gay disabled guy who lives in a cystic fibrosis ward and facilitates his buddy's heterosexual romance.

He lives in a post-Apocalyptic vault-community and buddy-bonds with a boy in Fallout (2024).

More Moises after the break

Jake Thomas: Lizzie McGuire's bratty brother plays Harry Potter, competes with Cory, kisses Finn.. With Jake's junk and Cory's cock.

Another day, another former teencom star all grown up. Today we're profiling Jake Thomas, who played Matt McGuire, the scamming, pranking little brother of the titular character on the Disney teencom  Lizzie McGuire (2001-2004, plus a 2003 movie).  

Matt is shown here with his best friend Lanny (Christian Copelin, who has retired from acting and now works as a realtor).  

I never actually watched, but the episode guide has him buddy-bonding with several other guys, including Oscar (Sebastian Jude) and Ethan (Clayton Trey Schneider), plus a "girly" interest in cheerleading that causes his father concern.  He could be queer coded. 

Afterwards  Lizzy, Jake moved into drama with a painful episode of Without a Trace (2004): High schooler Eric Miller (Jake) vanishes during a bathroom break.  The agents first assume that it's a kidnapping, but soon discover that he was lured into a humiliation trap.  He's heterosexual, but queer viewers who were bullied in high school still found it a powerfully moving experience.

Then Jake returned to his home in Knoxville, Tennessee to finish high school.   But he still had time for acting projects, like the movie Monster Night (2006), where he fights monsters and gets a girlfriend on Halloween; and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2003-07), where he plays the Harry Potter parody Nigel Planter.

Gay representation: Dean Toadblatt, headmaster of Toadblatt's School of Sorcery, marries his boyfriend in a 2007 episode.  Main characters Nergal and Irwin start dating in the series finale.  No parent complained.

After graeduating from Farragut High School in 2007, Jake returned to Los Angeles to play the snobbish Stickler in Cory in the House (2007-2008). He and Cory (Kyle Massey), son of the White House chef, compete over It-Girl Meena, daughter of the Bahavian Ambassador.  Stickler's dad is the head of the CIA, so he has access to a lot of super-spy equipment to make his wooing easier; but Meena still prefers Corey. 

Although Stickler only appears in 11 of 33 episodes, he was a fan favorite. On April 1,  2022, Jake announced a Cory spin-off, Stickler and Newt in the House, pairing Stickler with newly-elected President Newt (Jason Dolley, left).  It was an April Fool's Day prank, but many fans got excited, thinking that it was real.

Since it's imaginary, we can also imagine that Stickler and Newt are boyfriends.  Maybe the grown-up Cory drops by to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom.

More Jake after the break

Kevin Quinn: "Bunk'd" hunk, singer, mental health advocate, gay Christian. Or not. With the hunk's junk and Mykelti's bum

I have about eight profiles ready to post, plus reviews of tv shows and movies.  This one has been sitting in my files for awhile:

After reviewing the gay-engagement episode of the Disney Channel's Bunk'd, about a summer camp where the campers stick around for years, I checked for male cast members who were gay or had posted n*de photos as adults, and found two:  Nate Stone, below, and Kevin Quinn.

Kevin is gay and Christian, of special interest to me due to my hardcore evangelical childhood.  

The Chicago native had performed for the Children's Theater of Winnetka, but he was primarily interested in baseball until 2013: a week after his 15th birthday, he auditioned for American Idol -- the youngest contestant ever.  He made it through the Long Beach and Hollywood rounds before being eliminated.

After doubling up on courses to graduate from high school early, he returned to  Los Angeles, where he was immediately cast in Bunk'd as Xander McCormick, the handsome, muscular, but dim-witted summer camp counselor who draws the attention of "all" of the female counselors (and none of the male; this was still the Disney Channel)

He also appeared in an episode of Shameless and the remake of Adventures in Babysitting on the side.  Plus he was touring in a musical group.

After two seasons, Kevin left Bunk'd  due to exhaustion, stress, and mental health issues -- he was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.  He began concentrating on his singing, although he still appeared occasionally on screen:

Three episodes of Champions (2018) as Greg, who draws the interest of the gay boy Michael (Josie Totah before she began transitioning).

Brian in Canal Street (2018), a Christian movie with teenage Jackie (Mykelti Williamson, left) accused of murdering a classmate. He or his Dad, or both, find God.

A member of a social anxiety group in an episode of Love Daily (2018).

A starring role in A Christmas Love Story (2019), as a boy who has a "golden voice," and may be just who focus character Katherine needs to win or save whatever needs winning or saving.   Complication: the boy's father (Scott Wolf) disapproves of singing. Not macho enough for you, Dad?

Another starring role in A Week Away (2021), as an orphaned boy who finds a parental figure, a best buddy, a girlfriend, and God at a Christian summer camp (at least it only lasts for a week, not forever like "Bunk'd").  He originally auditioned for the best buddy role, but the showrunners thought he would shine as the lead.

A third starring role -- boyfriend is on fire! --  in Send It (2022), as an extreme sports player who finds a girlfriend, and I assume God, at a kiteboarding competition.

Kevin has about 30 recorded songs available on Spotify, including  "Wildfire," "I'm Still Breathing," "It's About Time," "Awesome God," and "God Only Knows."  He released an album, Real Me, in 2024

In 2023, he and co-host Justin Crawford began Luminosity, a podcast on mental health issues.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit