Robert Gant shares photos from his gay youth

Undergrad at Penn and law school at Georgetown? Wow, I’m impressed. He’s not(or wasn’t) just a pretty face. I wonder why or how he ended up in show business.

Easy R1

He’s incredibly shallow.

Who gives a fuck R2, he's sex on a fucking stick.

R1 A fuck’n hot AND smart gay. Way to go RG.

So if he was out, how come people were stunned that he was one of the gay actors on QAF? I mean the coming out of Peter Paige felt like the pope had come out catholic, but I distinctly remember all the jaws dropping when Robert Gant came out as one of the few gay actors on the show. Anyhow, it was nice to see him as the gay father of a lesbian daughter (but deep, deep in the closet) in 13RW as I really enjoyed the first two seasons of the show.

Gorgeous then and gorgeous now.

I think he was an associate at Baker McKenzie for a few years before going into showbiz.

He's just trying to make up for lost time, since he was hot only before social media took over the universe.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhalllllllllllll-low.

His former boyfriend was a stunner as well.

I was there, busily checking the crowd. What a wonderful time before social media turned everyone into raging narcissists. He certainly was gorgeous back then.

Hated him on QAF. The token POZ character.. As if Ben would have fallen for someone as bland as Michael.

Such a fudge packer...

I'd be genuinely saddened to discover he's shallow, R2. I've liked him since QAF, and think he's hot as hell.

He had a hot bod.

I've always liked him and found him hot. Impressive that he has Georgetown Law in his background, I never knew that either.

That being said, R2 may be right about the shallow thing. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that as a young, white, and conventionally very attractive gay guy, he chose to surround himself with a gaggle of guys just like him. Happened 30 years ago, still happens today, it will never change. In that group of what must be 30+ dudes, not even one with a hint of something non-white about him.

I was at that March in '93. I was not asked to be in that photo.

The photo at r15 would make Leni Reifenstahl proud

They didn’t even include one Caucasian with black hair.

The photo at R15 is a horror.

He was, and still is, hot

R15 America was aesthetically a better place in 1993.

In an odd way that photo kind of explains Datalounge. All of the guys in that photo would probably be the right demographic for posting on here.

I was there.

He's fucking hot and seems to be a really nice guy. We're the exact same age. He's aged much better than me. I probably couldn't even be in the same county as him if someone was taking a photo. I'm OK with as long as I can look at him.

I’d really enjoy watching him shave while shirtless. Now that I think about it, I need to google Robert Gant shaving.

R21 do you honestly think men that look like that post here? Jesus Christ wishful projection much?

He doesn't look 23 in that pic. But yes, hot as fuck.

Tough crowd. The early to mid nineties were the deadliest of the AIDS epidemic, with AIDS as the leading cause of death for men 25 to 44. Those men were looking into the barrel of a gun.

White gays tended to congregate together, less by choice and more for practical reasons and survival. US demographics were substantially more white, and the country was de facto segregated based on social and economic class. Though people of color died of AIDS at higher rates, there was even greater stigma in being openly gay.

The picture at r15 could have been used to fire the men from their jobs, estrange them from their families, or deny them a security clearance.

This was a time when someone had to skip the funeral to stay at the deceased’s home. Otherwise, the relatives who had abandoned their gay son for his perversion would swoop in to claim his property.

That group was probably some kind of organization. That’s how we marched. In this case Human Ken Dolls?

Those are all valid points R27 but at the same time it should be noted that this was a pluralistic march drawing people from all over the country, in one of the blackest US Cities. If the purpose of the march is to show strength in diversity, why is it so distressing to see gay man embracing, um, Reinfenstahlian ideals? During the AIDS crisis, ACT UP consistently repurposed Holocaust terminology, yet the very purpose of the Holocaust was to “make everybody look the same.” Why is such an oppressed group upholding the values of the oppressor?

R29. I think you missed my point. Perhaps it wasn’t clear. These people were in crisis and lived in a social structure they did not choose. There were few black gay people around in their colleges, jobs, or bars. People of color were largely not present in these spheres and they often rejected inclusion. For example, DC’s black gay pride was held in a hotel well into the current century.

Since you brought up the Holocaust, do you also judge those victims for sticking to their all-white group?

Btw: Robert Gant is Latino.

R29, if you look at pictures of the March there weren’t many black people there to start with. Other than a group which marched called Black Unity, there aren’t more than one or two black people in any crowd picture I can find online.

"Please feel guilt and shame for living the life you had."

[quote] Btw: Robert Gant is Latino.

Latino is a cultural designation, not a racial one; Latino cultural is pluralistic just as North American cultures are, with significant racial hierarchies of which Robert Gant would have been on the top tier; and furthermore, Robert Gant ANGLICIZED HIS NAME. So no, Robert Gant does not get to use the Latino card.

[quote][R21] do you honestly think men that look like that post here? Jesus Christ wishful projection much?

Do you think all of the old, grizzled, angry queens on DL were always old, grizzled, angry, queens? No, they ran around NYC and WeHo with their all-white posses posing shirtless and being whores. Now, some of them are in various states of their 50s being crotchety and yelling at the clouds (DLers) or have remade themselves into GenZ mimickers and are pretending like the 90s never happened.

I eagerly await watch my Instagram feed from the memory care facility. Zoomer and young millennial warriors fighting off the ravages of climate change in their carefully curated, demographically balanced tribes. Meanwhile, Generation Alpha plots to Soylent Green us all.

I want to see Gant's gunt.

R27 makes some valid points.

However, it bears repeating that people like those in this photo were absolutely, purposefully, excluding black and latino people from their tribes. Images like the above are part of the reason why people of color, gender non-conforming people, and ESPECIALLY queer women have both been excluded and distanced themselves from mainstream "gay culture."

Defending segregation because "times were different" is abhorrent.

Yeah, that’s it. I was TOTALLY defending segregation.

R37, you're tiresome.

Not going out of your way to include someone who you would never realize is missing isn't the same as purposefully excluding people.

R15’s pic is so gross.

I sort of resent people who got to experience life in America in previous times. I was born too late. I consider my generation disgusting inside and out.

'90s so White

R33: “ Latino is a cultural designation, not a racial one”

Confirmed. “Latinx” is the racial one.

R37 Well that’s one thing I noticed about those photos. There’s no black, Latino, Asian, no trans, no drag queens, no women. The total opposite of what today looks like.

Someone said blacks and Latinos were more discreet and held pride inside? Is that really true? I’ve never seen anything that discreet about a lot of gay black and Latino men.

I just feel like minorities knew they weren’t invited lol.

R42 These photos look exactly like Aaron Schlock’s Instagram.

R37 is correct! There are also no disabled trans women sex workers pictured!

Those defending this are abhorrent. Instead of defending racism they should invent a Time Machine, travel back to the 90s and cancel these people on social media!!!!

R47 I understand what you mean.

I’m 35, Pride was mostly associated with white men even when I was a teenager in the 2000’s.

R38 I’m biracial, grew up in a melting pot / immigrant city outside of Boston. My city’s high schools rank as the most racially diverse in the state. I think even the US.

The cafeteria spoke volumes. It wasn’t segregated, it was tribalism. The US-born Latinos separated themselves from the “hicks” (immigrant Latinos). The Asians had their own tables like Cambodians and Vietnamese. The “white” Asians like the Chinese / Japanese sat with the white kids.

I was not popular by any means but I sat at the “popular” table (it was actually 2 long tables in the middle of the cafeteria) because all my childhood friends were popular. And popular is a stretch, it was the jock table. Ironically it was the most diverse because it was predominantly athletes + their friends.

It’s like asking where were all the white people during the ballroom scenes? It wasn’t their scene. Maybe Pride parades weren’t where black and Latinos wanted to be. They were doing battles at balls.

Gant's always come off as a bit of a John Hughes-style baddie for gays that doesn't deliver what the pedigree says, and there's not much more to it than that.

R47 there is such a thing a black gay pride 🏳️‍🌈 . Why does everything have to be diverse? Most people tend to hang out with people who they have the most in common with. Most of my friends are non-white.

[quote]Latino is a cultural designation, not a racial one; Latino cultural is pluralistic just as North American cultures are, with significant racial hierarchies of which Robert Gant would have been on the top tier; and furthermore, Robert Gant ANGLICIZED HIS NAME. So no, Robert Gant does not get to use the Latino card.

Does Latino include indigenous people from Central and South America or the descendants of white European colonisers from Spain and Portugal?

Didn't the early 1990s muscled shaved chest look come as a response to AIDS with gay men embracing fitness and health to show they weren't sick?

That and trying to copy the Marky Mark look.

There’s a woman next to Gant, as well as a possible colorful man.

[quote]Tough crowd. The early to mid nineties were the deadliest of the AIDS epidemic, with AIDS as the leading cause of death for men 25 to 44. Those men were looking into the barrel of a gun.

What?!? You mean the '90s weren't the [bold]aftermath[/bold] of the HIV-AIDS epidemic?

Yes, R52, that was true.

[quote] Someone said blacks and Latinos were more discreet and held pride inside? Is that really true? I’ve never seen anything that discreet about a lot of gay black and Latino men.

Yes. Bear in mind this was a political march that made the national news. The stigma and potential consequences for openly gay people of color were 10× worse than for those white(-presenting) guys at r15. Times have changed slowly for non-white, non-privileged gays.

R15, R17, R18, R29, R37, R41, R43: FUCK YOU CUNTS! We were just trying to survive while watching the HORROR of our friends and loved ones wasting away into living skeletons before they died. Our beloved friends and lovers were dying without any contact with their families so we had to step in and handle their affairs, arrange and pay for funerals, clean out their homes and dispose of their belongings. Or we had to deal with evil hateful family members who finally did show up after they died so that they could pick the corpse. All in a culture that refused to acknowledge our trauma while actively cheering-on our deaths. The LAST THING on our minds was making sure we had the appropriate percentage of non-white friends in our rapidly-dwindling social groups.

I’m so SICK of the constant knee-jerk condemnation from today’s sheltered judgemental twits who somehow think you have the right to judge us for the RARE moments when we were just trying to find a shred of joy in the middle of a holocaust, in between hospital visits and funerals. Have some FUCKING respect.

RandyRand (R57), you get my WW for today. Thanks for speaking up.

R57 Calm. The. FUCK. Down. Also, get on the fucking topic if you want to convey outrage, instead of taking someone else's post and veering off on a tangent.

My post said NOTHING about AIDS, the equality march, or anything NEAR those topics. It was an observation about how gay men's cliques then and now in many ways haven't changed.

By the way, I'm over 50 so I lived through the AIDS crisis as well. I agree and empathize with much of your post, but I *REJECT* the implied accusation you're making that I said ANYTHING to condemn those suffering from AIDS.

Yet, r 59, you do refer to someone with 1993 priorities as "shallow" because he's photographed in a gaggle of white gays, i.e., gays who look like him, instead of a more diverse crowd one has come to anticipate thirty years later. We weren't thinking about diversity then. We were thinking about surviving—who would, and who likely wouldn't make it to 1994.

Language like "not even one with a hint of something non-white about him" lets us know that diversity is what you somehow prioritized then.

If people were really being honest, even today people tend to tribe up with people who look like them. Go to the Instagrams and Tik Toks of Gen Z and you will see groups of good looking white kids all hanging out. Occasionally you might find a black person or an Asian mixed in, but for the most part, and in spite of all the talk of diversity and equity and inclusion, nothing has really changed all that much in practice.

And none of that means that everybody is racist, it's just the way life shakes out sometimes. The jocks hang out with the jocks. The preps hang out with the preps. And the weirdos hangout with the weirdos.

Pretty white gay men tend to find one another, and sometimes a black one or an Asian one or a fat one might get grandfathered in through a friend of a friend situation, but that the way it was. And that is the way it still is. And what is still true today, everybody wants to fuck the Latin guys.

Don't listen to what people say in social media, watch what they do in practice.

R60 Diversity is something I've always prioritized, then and now. I'm proud of that and I don't apologize for it.

Also: While I'm sure it's possible -- perhaps even likely -- that some of the young men in this picture from 1993 may have been HIV-positive, caring for partners with AIDS and/or lost loved ones to the disease, by 1993 there were many young men (myself included) who were already practicing safe sex from our sexual Day 1. We were at lower risk of contracting the virus, because by the time our sex lives began we knew how to best protect ourselves. The point being: AIDS discrimination was still alive and well in 1993, but to cloak what we see in this picture as *only* a survival tactic from the horrors of AIDS paints with just as broad a brush.

I am not offended by that photo. At that time in my life I didn't want to be publicly associated with anything gay. If I went to Pride I'd be careful to dodge the cameras. A picture like that today is obnoxious but in 1993 you could almost say those guys were brave. As noted upthread, back then people could be fired for being gay, or more likely ostracized and experience impediments to career advancement.

What the fuck is r 15 going on about? “Diversity is something I've always prioritized” means what about some guy’s pic of friends 30 years ago?

R64 Feel free to read THE ENTIRE FUCKING THREAD for the context you're seeking. Also, verily fuck off.

No. I won’t fuck off. You’re just a moron, r15.

But you knew that already, didn’t you.

R66 / R64 Being called a moron by a lazy, loudmouth, idiotic fuckwit like you? I'll take that as a compliment and nod toward my intelligence.

I maintain you should fuck off in perpetuity and across the universe. God bless, asshole.

Imogene was wrong. It didn’t kill all the right people. And you are the proof, r15.

R15 But you did, by passing judgement on those men in that photo for not being photographed with any persons of colour you *explicitly condemned people suffering from AIDS*. We all suffered from the disease for decades, even those of us that survived. We put on a brave face, pretended to be gay and flighty and carefree for photos, worked out and primped our bodies in an attempt to look as healthy as possible, and then went home and wiped our incontinent dying lovers’ asses and planned our best friends’ funerals.

I’m just so tired of seeing other gay men being judged by today’s gays for apparently being so terribly racist/elitist/anti lesbian/anti trans, when were just reeling from being surrounded by so much death. We were trying to survive. We didn’t have the time or energy for barely anything beyond that. We were condemned by the straights back then and now in this century we are condemned by younger gays for crimes *that exist only in their imagination*. It’s disheartening.

To you and the rest of the holier-than-tho jerks who *always* respond to a photo of gay men from the past with judgement instead of compassion: do better.

Thank you, RandyRand.

[quote] To you and the rest of the holier-than-tho jerks who *always* respond to a photo of gay men from the past with judgement instead of compassion: do better.

R69 I don't *always* do ANYTHING. Stop generalizing while freely giving yourself the moral high ground in every single response.

I made a point. You made a point. We've had an exchange. Now, feel free to move on. Silence is golden.

[quote] I’m just so tired of seeing other gay men being judged by today’s gays for apparently being so terribly racist/elitist/anti lesbian/anti trans, when were just reeling from being surrounded by so much death. We were trying to survive. We didn’t have the time or energy for barely anything beyond that. We were condemned by the straights back then and now in this century we are condemned by younger gays for crimes *that exist only in their imagination*. It’s disheartening.

That's very melodramatic. It was 1993 not 1983 -- young gay men had been numbed to the stigma and devastation of AIDS by 93. Times weren't that perilous and the dudes in that picture weren't merely surviving they were living their lives without a thought for the culture they were creating for future generations of queer people. It wasn't the best of times but it certainly wasn't the worst.

Is he the Maytag Repairman?

Amen R57.

He was pectacular as Phoebe's hot boyfriend on an episode of Friends.

Regardless of the photo, it does seem pretty self-hating to go as far as changing your name from Gonzales to Gant.

Pride, indeed.

[QUOTE]Diversity is something I've always prioritized, then and now. I'm proud of that and I don't apologize for it.

You sound like some of the people who invited me to their parties because they wanted a gay person there.

The picture looks like a display of 'clean gays'. All white, all muscled, no chest or facial hair like those diseased porn stache clones...all visual cues that you're not the "type" to be wasting away at a hospital.

Who?

Guys who looked like Robert & Gene intimidated the shit out of little gay me at Uncle Charlies during the late 1980s & early 1990s. I felt completely insecure around them because they were so God-like.

[quote] Regardless of the photo, it does seem pretty self-hating to go as far as changing your name from Gonzales to Gant.

This is actually common for fair-skinned hispanic actors (James Roday who has since reclaimed his last name Rodriguez).

And then you gave someone like Oscar Isaac who is not lightskinned but decided to LARP as Jewish rather than be Oscar Hernandez.

For people who are talking about diversity have you guys thought about the non-whites who don’t mind not being invited to all white cliques? I find it annoying that people assume that if you’re a nonwhite gay that you have to be dying for the acceptance and validation of white gays. Also, I noticed that most blacks are not even paying attention to white gays. It’s mostly the white gays that couldn’t be invited or accepted into these cliques that harp about the diversity problem.

Did he get fillers? He's a guest star on Station 19 and he looks like he got the Rupert Everett Special.