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

Kenton Duty: The "Shake It Up" star shakes it up with Christian soap operas and j/o videos

 

Some former teen stars retain their cuteness through their 20s, 30s, 40s, and on.  Others move from "dreamy" to "meh," and an unfortunate few turn into gorgons.   I'll leave it to you to decide what happened to Kenton Duty.  

Yes, that's his real name.

Born in 1995, Kenton began acting at the age of nine, and first appeared on screen at age eleven.  He drew fan attention in 2010 for a ridiculous background story on the paranormal Lost: in the first century CE, a Roman woman is shipwrecked on the floating island, has twin sons, Jacob and ___.  Christians and Jews were a tiny minority at the time.  How does she know the Jewish name?   For the rest of the plot arc, everyone refuses to say the name of the other brother, although it obviously has to be Esau.  

This led to Shake It Up (2010-12), a slight variation on the usual Disney teencom format.  Instead of a girl who wants to be a singer, it featured two girls who want to be dancers. Kenton played the German-stereotype Gunther Hessenheffer, who dances with his sister Tinka.  According to the fan wiki, he is "flamboyant, fashion-conscious, theatrical," with a gay-subtext firendship with Ty Blue (Roshon Feagan) but straight, dating and crushing on a number of girls.

You might expect some gay characters or subtexts in Contest (2013), where a  bully and his queer-coded victim (Kenton, left, Daniel Flanagan, not shown) work together to win a contest, but the victim gets a girl.

We do see a lot of Kenton's physique, and Phil of the Future's Raviv Ullman appears.

Don't get excited. It's Guys Night (2015) is a two-minute short in which the guys get a girl to join them.  Why would two guys want to spend time alone?

Kenton's most significant role in the post-Shake It Up era is in the Christian soap Hilton Head Island (2017-19). Michael Swan stars as the dying patriarch of a clan scheming to get their hands on his media empire. Kenton plays a grandson. 

He's done some other Christian tv series, like The Encounter (Jesus steps in to solve people's problems), but also some secular stuff, like Filthy Preppy Teens and A Housekeeper's Revenge.

Kenton also has eight writing and 31 directing credits, mostly in shorts: Labels, All in the Cards, Gloommates, Kids on Patrol, Wasteland, Dead Giveaway, Condemned.  They don't have descriptions on the IMDB, and I doubt that any have gay content, so we'll skip right to the n*de photos. 

More after the break. Caution: explicit

Shane Harper: the "Good Luck Charlie" and "God's Not Dead" guy shows his dick surprisingly often

 I wanted to research Shane Harper, the extremely well-hung drug dealer  Junior on Hightown (2020-21).  He's distraught over his girlfriend's death, so he makes some homophobic comments to two leather daddies, hoping that they will kill him.  They just beat him up; he dies of a drug overdose later.

Shane only has six photos on his Instagram, and two on his X, including this one: he getting a spray-on tan,  with the caption: "this is probably the only nude photo I'll ever post."

Don't believe him.  He posts a lot of nude photos.

So who is this guy?

According to the IMDB, he was born in San Diego, and began dancing, singing, and acting in community productions at the age of nine.   He played dancers in Re-Animated, High School Musical 2, Dance Revolution, and Dancing on Sunset.

Then he bounced arund the Disney Channel for a few years, guest starring in Zoey 101 and  Wizards of Waverly Place, and starring in Good Luck, Charlie as Teddy's boyfriend (Teddy is a girl; so is Charlie)

He released an album in 2011,  so I check out the heterosexism: the number of songs that shout "girl! girl! girl!," thus proclaiming that every relationship is heterosexual and invalidating the desires and relationships of LGBT fans.

Not much heterosexism.   But then look what happens:

God's Not Dead, 2014, starrs right-wing nutjob Kevin Sorbo as an evil college professor who forces his students to submit signed statements affirming that "God is dead."  This is utterly ridiculous. College professors don't force students to accept any point of view. They aren't allowed to.

Besides, The Death of God  (1961) was a book complaining that modern society had lost its sense of transcendence, the magical in everyday life.  The author didn't mean that the actual Supreme Being was dead.  And it was 50 years ago.  Why are fundamentalists still upset about it?

Shane plays the student who bravely challenges the evil prof and ends up proving that God is, in fact, still alive.

He returns in God's Not Dead: A Light in the Darkness (2018), in which a Christian pastor is tormented, and his church burned down, by an army of atheists and liberals.  No philosophy professors?  

OMG, that is jaw-droppingly idiotic. 

In a 2011 interview, Shane states that he only takes "wholesome" and "uplifting" roles. For instance, he would be ok with playing a gay guy, as long as the movie establishes that being gay is wrong, and has him give up the lifestyle.  

That was over a decade ago. Let's see what Shane has been up to lately.

Besides posting nude photos, I mean.

More after the break.

Alex Saxon: From fundamentalist Missouri to ace and trans roles to androgynous teen angst hunk. With his n*de older brother

A new Righteous Gemstones character has appeared in the Episode 4.1 cast list, Alex Saxon as "Thaddeus," no doubt a Civil War guy.

According to Alex Saxon's biography on the IMDB, he was born in  1987 in Liberty, Missouri, 15 miles north of Kansas City, began acting in the theater at age 8.

A femme appearance, in the theater, and living in Liberty, Missouri.  I can't imagine how terrible the bullying was.

He sang, danced, and sometimes acted in Bye Bye Birdie, Jekyll& Hyde: The Musical, Grease, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Breakfast Club Live

After high school, he enrolled at William Jewell College as a pre-med major, but then changed to Psychology and Applied Critical Thought, with a minor in Chemistry.  He graduated magna cum laude in 2009.

The William Jewell College in Liberty is affiliated with the Baptist Church, so I imagine that it's not at all gay friendly. 

He hit Los Angeles in 2011, and began acting for the screen:

A vampire guy at the Big Dance in an episode of Awkward (2011).

The Olivia Experiment (2012): A woman suspects that she is asexual, so she accepts a friend's offer of sex with her own boyfriend to find out.  That is wrong on so many levels.  You know whether you're into sex or not without actually having it.  That's like the people who ask "How do you know you don't like sex with women unless you've tried it?"  Easy...look at a woman, and ask yourself "Do you want to have sex with her?"

Alex plays a member of the Asexual Support Group, where Olivia is informed that she's not really asexual, she's just afraid to open up to intimacy.  

Young Paul Holt in Chapman (2013), which seems to be a Western.

Young Henry Bird in The Advocates (2013), which seems to be about lawyers

Chloe in two episodes of Ray Donovan (2013-2015): a "transvestite" hooker who is blackmailing movie star Tommy (Austin Nichols) to get money for "a sex change."  What is this, 1975?  The vocabulary is all wrong.  Transgender people don't get "sex changes," they transition.

Coin Heist (2017), about four teens -- "the hacker, the slacker, the athlete, and the perfect student," who scheme to steal from the U.S. Mint.  Alex, with relatively short hair, plays the Slacker, who is the ex-boyfriend of the Perfect Student (a girl, of course) and falls in love with the Hacker (a girl, of course).  Not to worry, the Perfect Student hooks up with the Athlete (a boy, of course), so everything is all tied up into a nice little heteronormative package.

Then it's back to long hair for 28 episodes of the teen angst series The Fosters (2013-18), as Callie's on-off boyfriend

36 episodes of the teen angst series Finding Carter (2014-15) as the on-off boyfriend of Carter's sister.

10 episodes of The Fix (2019) as the stepson of Sevvy Johnson (Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje), an actor accused of murdering two of his girlfriends.  He assaults his father, gets into fights, and does other deviant stuff while dating girls.

62 episodes of Nancy Drew(2019-23), as a drug-addled outsider who becomes one of the teen sleuth's scoobies and dates girls.

An episode of Criminal Minds as Pete Bailey, younger brother of the murdered Deputy Director Doug Bailey (Nicholas D'Agosto, left).

Noticing a pattern in Alex's screen presence? Long hair, soft, feminine, gay-coded in spite of his characters' endless series of girlfriends.

He doesn't have Instagram, and his X just promotes his tv series, so his personal life is up for speculation.  LezWatch calls him cisgender heterosexual, but that may just be default.

Could he be gay in real life?

More after the break

Caleb Ruminer: From fundamentalist Arkansas to angst drama, softcore straight porn, j/o videos, and gay teases

 

In the teen drama Finding Carter (2014-2015), 16-year old Carter (Kathryn Prescott) discovers that the woman she thinks of as her mother actually kidnapped her when she was three.  She is reunited with her birth family, and must juggle the standard high school "boyfriends! fashion!  mean girls!" drama with soap opera angst: kidnapping, insanity, sexual assault, cancer, drug abuse, murder, "shocking revelations," and "dark secrets."

She has two potential boyfriends, the violent drug dealer Crash (Caleb Ruminer) and the kind, gentle Max (Alex Saxon). 

There are two lesbian characters, Madison and Bird, who face extensive homophobia, go through extensive angst, and date Max before figuring "it" out. 

I've already done a profile of Alex Saxon, so this is about Caleb Ruminer,  which is hard to type without it sounding dirty.  It means "someone who ruminates," fixates on negative thoughts.

Caleb was born in Cabot, Arkansas, about 25 miles north of Little Rock.   Ulp.

He found his passion for acting while singing in church, appearing in church plays, and so on. Ulp.

After graduating from high school, he attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, AMDA, in Los Angeles, for two years. Then dropped out because they were too liberal?

His first acting gig was an 2013 episode of Castle, as the brother of a teenager who would grow up to be on death row.

Then came the unyielding angst of Finding Carter 

In a 2014 interview in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (wait -- there are Democrats in Arkansas?), Caleb talks about a struggle with being a Christian and playing a bad dude.  But, he figures, the bad dude is never praised for committing sins, so it's ok.  He found a church in Los Angeles where they talk about how you can be Christian and an actor.  

Ulp.  Doubtless there's some (a lot) of homophobia in Caleb's background.

But some penises, too (after the break)

After Carter, Caleb starred in Lethal Seduction (2015), which is what it sounds like: teenager Caleb is seduced by his cougar neighbor, who influences him to do  a lot of deviant stuff.  His mother is also in love with him, so the two psychos have an increasingly violent tug-of-war with Caleb in the middle. Plus he has a teen girlfriend and a best buddy (Sam Lerner, right)

Sam Lerner is best known as Geoff Schwartz on The Goldbergs (2014-23). Here he chills with some very gifted homies.

Next Caleb had guest spots on:

Episode 1.5 of The World According to Billy Potwin (2018), about a far-right anti-vax 13-year old in a family of liberals. Like Family Ties? 

Episode 1.1 of Strange Ones (2018): "Two enigmatic travelers make their way across a remote landscape," facing paranormal peril. First up: an abused high school girl conjures a demon.  Wait, a movie entitled The Strange Ones and a tv series called Strange Ones both premiered in 2018.  I may be mixing them up.

Episode 2.3 of Dirty John: Betty Broderick (2020), a true-crime show about the woman who murdered her ex-husband (Christian Slater) and his new wife in 1989.  "Betty takes a desperate step to save her marriage."

Episode 1.1 of The Irrational (2023): A professor (Jesse L. Martin, left) uses his knowledge of human nature to solve murders.  His roommate and best friend is a queer woman.

Caleb's character is a former Marine suffering from PTSD and alcohol abuse.  Figures.

Dude, try a comedy.  They aren't that bad.

More after the break.  Caution: Explicit

"Welcome to Plathville": Beefcake and bulges of a hard-core fundamentalist family, including the Boylicious model

 

Welcome to Plathville, originally on TLC but recently streamed to Hulu, is a six-season long reality series about the Plaths: "A strikingly blonde, blue-eyed Quiverfull family with 9 children in Southeastern Georgia, who are very passionate about traditional roles, their courtship rituals, music, God, and domestic life."

Brr.  Sounds too scary.  They must be wildly homophobic, but I imagine that they agreed to appear only if there were no "homosexuals" in the crew, so maybe they won't mention them at all.  Episodes appear to be soap-opera like, with marital problems, career troubles, treks into secular civilization, and lots of clickbait "dark secrets" and "startling revelations."

The elder Plaths belong to the No Greater Joy Ministries, an out-of-the-box fundamentalist cult that, other than hating homos, teaches that women must always be subservient to men -- working outside the home is a major sin, and will turn her into an evil lesbian.  Plus you must beat your children to ensure their subservience -- if you don't, they'll start to talk back and turn gay.

I'm definitely too squeamish to watch, but I'll check the Plaths for fundamentalist beefcake.

The parents, Barry and Kim, have broken up and gotten a divorce.  In my childhood church, that would have gotten them kicked out.

Their oldest child, Ethan,left,  married the outsider Olivia, who works as a photographer.  A woman working outside the home!  Shocking!

They got divorced, also.

Ethan and a buddy at the gym.

Daughter Hosanna refused to appear on the show.  She has left the family, moved to Ohio, and married an outsider.  Shocking revelation!

Daughter Moriah visited San Francisco and had sex with her boyfriend Max Kallschmidt. A dark secret revealed!

 The younger children are Lydia, Isaac, Amber, Cassidy, and Mercy.  

Micah works as a model, which means he has to work with gay people.  Uh-oh, he's doomed. 

Wait -- a model?  He must have some n*de photos out there somewhere.

More after the break.

Bobby Hogan: From homophobic college to parody Spiderman, with some significant dicks in between

 

"The Lake," from Season 2 of  American Horror Stories, follows the recent American Horror Story pattern of minimizing or eliminating LGBT representation.  In the first scene, three hot guys and three bikini-clad girls are on a boat, discussing how heterosexual they are.  

Jake (Bobby Hogan) has a map of the village that was flooded to create their lake, so he and his sister dive down and look for souvenirs.  Suddenly a green tendril grabs him and pulls him into the muck.  He doesn't appear again, except as a corpse.  In fact, none of the cute guys appear again.  The story is all about sister Finn and her mother discovering the evil secret of the lake.

Heteronormativity or no, I wanted more than just one scene worth of Bobby Hogan's chest and abs, so I researched him on IMDB and his instagram, looking for beefcake and evidence that he is gay.

Not much biographical information.  On his Facebook, he says that he is from St. Louis and Chaminade College Preparatory School and Belmont University in Nashville.  Chaminade is Catholic, and Belmont is "Christ-centered," affiliated with the Southern Baptist Church until it broke away in 2007, and intensely homophobic. 

Bobby starred in Escape to Margaritaville, Footloose, and Johnny and the Devil's Box, and graduated with a BFA in Musical Theater in 2019.  

Wait -- 90% of musical theater guys are gay.  How does Belmont even allow a musical theater degree program?  Bobby must be gay or gay-friendly, but then why would he choose a homophobic college and listen to rants about how evil he or his fellow drama majors are?  I'm confused.

On WeAudition, advertising a service helping you run lines, develop a character, and so on, Bobby states that he moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 2020 to begin his film/tv career.  Unfortunately, it was the start of the COVID pandemic, so roles were scarce.  He has 10 listins on the IMDB, beginning in 2021 with The Superhero Diaries  

He plays a Parody Spiderman in 7 episodess.  I watched some clips on Youtube: a date with Harley Quinn, and serenading Wonder Woman.  Depressingly heteronormative, but he displays a nice physique and bulge.

After that, a lot of guest gigs:

Duncan in the 9-1-1 Lone Star episode "Red vs. Blue."  It's actually about a cops-firefighter baseball game, not red states vs. blue states.

 Marine Recruit #6 in the movie Manifest Evil. The trailer shows a man interacting with two women, yawn.

The American Horror Stories gig.

Trevor Logan on The FBI episode "Fortunate Son." A teen shows up at headquarters with a bag of fentanyl, and wants the gang to find out who killed his father.  To meet my n*de dude quota, the RG Beefcake and Boyfriends site has a frontal photo of John Boyd, who plays one of the agents, after the break

A soldier on the NCIS episode "Survival of the Fittest."  He is attacked by a genetic weapon.

Cole on SWAT

Joshua in Remy & Arletta, a Christian movie about two girls who are friends (not girlfriends).  A Christian movie?   Figures.

Two episodes on Chicago PD as Noah Gorman, a teenager who leaves home after his homophobic parents denounce him for being gay. He is kidnapped, but mom and dad don't care, it's what he deserves for turning evil.  He is found, badly beaten and traumatized, but won't say who the kidnapper was.  

Hank Voight, Jason Beghe, takes him in, since he has nowhere else to go.  In the next episode, he is kidnapped again and killed -- not in a hate crime, just a regular serial killer, but still an awful "bury your gays" moment.  If you are gay, you must die.

But at least Bobby had no problem with playing a gay character. 

I'm posting a shot of Jason Beghe's backside, and some potential Bobby dicks after the break.

Bug Hall: A lot of movies no one has seen, some homophobic rants, and an enormous penis

 I'm always conflicted about posting nude pictures of homophobic actors. There's a little frisson of guilt that comes from looking at the penis of someone who hates you, as if you are somehow encouraging him. On the other hand, imagine how upset he would be to find himself the object of homoerotic desire.

And, to be fair, it is huge.

In this case, I'm talking about Bug Hall, who hit the big screen in 1994. at the age of eight.  He played Alfalfa in The Little Rascals, a modernized version of the Our Gang comedy shorts of the 1930s.  Having already seen some of the shorts -- no, not in the 1930s -- I didn't watch, but I heard that Alfalfa falls in love with a girl.  At age eight.

The original Alfalfa, Carl Switzer, had a hard life after Our Gang, and was killed in a bar fight in 1959, at age 31. 

Bug Hall had a hard life after The Little Rascals, too. Far less successful kid movies followed: The Big Green, The Stupids, and The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas. I don't think anybody saw them.

He sprang into a heteronormative adolescence with Skipped Parts, 2000, about having sex with a girl.  I didn't see it, but there's a clip floating around the internet where the 14-year old is getting undressed in preparation for the sex, and becomes aroused.  I can't tell if it was scripted, or an accident.  Either way, you don't want to see it. 

More heteronormativity with Get a Clue, 2002, about two high school journalists who solve a mystery and fall in love.  I didn't see it, but I like the theme song, "Get a Clue," performed by Simon and Milo, an animated gay-subtext couple.

Get a clue, there's nothing you can't do.

Nothing's ever quite what it seems

Just look a little closer at me

Wake up, who knew, it's me, it's you, get a clue.

More sex in Footsteps and Arizona Summer, which I didn't see, and then a fizzing out into guest spots on tv dramas: Strong Medicine, Charmed, Cold Case, The O.C.

Bug runs away naked in The Day the Earth Stopped, 2008: "Hundreds of massive intergalactic robots appear in all of the world's major capitals with an ultimatum: Prove the value of human civilization or be destroyed."  Holy cow, that sounds awful.

It features a man and a woman falling in love -- heterosexual romance is the value of human civilization, get it? 

At this point, you're probably wondering if I've actually seen Bug Hall in anything. I'm wondering about that, too. 

American Pie Presents the Book of Love. No.

Camoflauge: "A troubled teen-aged boy is sent to a boot camp in a secluded forest where he must survive the horrifying disciplinary tactics of a demented camp counselor."  No, and the blurb writer forgot the first rule of writing: minimal use of stupid, superfluous adjectives.

More Bug after the break

Nathan Kress, Freddie from ICarly, grown up. Is he still homophobic? Is he still shy about showing his dick?

Many Nickelodeon shows of the 2000s had strong homophobic subtexts, and  ICarly (2007-2012) was one of the worst.  Miranda Cosgrove starred as Carly, who hosts an internet comedy show with her butch-but-straight buddy Sam (a girl) and nerd-next-door-with-a- stereotyped crush on her, Freddie (Nathan Kress).  

They are supervised by her wacky bi-subtext older brother, Spencer. 

 On the way, the contempt for gay men, or as Sam calls them, prancies, oozes out in joke after joke.  The most egregious is Spencer being chased down and arrested for appearing in public in a dress; cross-dressing has not been a crime in any American city since the 1970s.

I especially disliked Nathan Kress, amd not only for the horribly cliched "unrequited crush" plotlines.  As he bulked up, he steadfastly refused to permit beefcake photos.  To an extent, that's his choice: his body, his rules.  But when you choose a career that depends on displaying that body, and further set yourself up as a teen idol, you have a sort of obligation to your fans.

More annoying was his reason for failing to post beefcake: he was a way, way conservative fundamentalist of the "hating ten gays before breakfast" variety, and he didn't want girls and prancies getting ideas.

Today Nathan's instagram is full of wife-and-children pictures. 

Still hardly any beefcake, unless incorporated into the wife-and-kid pictures.

And he's still ultra-fundamentalist.

I wouldn't find this mug so annoying if I didn't know that Nathan's God is good only to heterosexuals.  

I don't know who the crazy looking friend is.

More Nathan after the break