News flash! Boston Spirit's gay media issue out

I just received my copy of the January/February issue of Boston Spirit Magazine.

As previously reported in Loaded Gun, WHDH-TV's Ryan Schulteis does come out in Scott Kearnan's nicely crafted feature "News Flash! They're gay!" focusing on the slew of openly gay media professionals in Boston.

In the story's opening section, Schulteis admits that he was hesistant about doing the story. "I was thinking,'This could be online,'" he spills to Kearnan. "Someone back home, a cousin or something, could Google my name and now this might pop up. And how am I going to deal with that?"

My heart dropped. Hailing from a small town in Wisconsin, Schulteis only recently came out to family and friends.

The 29-year-old reporter continues, "I'm going to be 30 years old soon. Time to grow up and deal with this. Life is life."

As someone who grew up in a conservative town, I completely identify with his struggle. My heart goes out to him and I personally applaud his strength to be himself. He may not know it yet, but he has the potential to be a role model to the thousands of GLBT young adults who have similar coming-out stories. Props to Schulteis.

Ironically, I unknowingly spent New Year's Eve with the magazine's cover boy, design guru Dennis Duffy from Duffy Design Group and D Scale. We have mutual friends and had a lovely dinner together ringing in 2009 where we shared war stories from our days living in NYC.

"I lived in Chelsea before it was Chelsea," he joked about his former Manhattan home, now gentrified. My quip, "Yeah, I lived in the East Village before it was the East Village."

Click here to snag a free copy of the latest edition of Boston Spirit Magazine.