In a fashion story and interview for Out magazine, cover stars Matt Bomer, Jonathan Bailey, Jelani Alladin, and Noah J. Ricketts reflect on the familial bonds formed by the actors in the upcoming limited eight-episodes series ‘Fellow Travelers’, with its premier October 27 on ‘Showtime’.

This fashion story and narrative by Mey Rude was created for Out before the Hollywood actor’s strike.

The quartet is styled by Michael Miller in images by Jason Hetherington [IG]. Brands in the polished, sartorial glamour images include Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Hermes, Maxime, People of All Nations, Valentino and more.

‘Fellow Travelers’ Story Line

In the story line of ‘Fellow Travelers’, as narrated by Out:

. . . actors Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey play Hawk Fuller and Tim Laughlin, two men who meet while working in Washington, D.C., at the start of McCarthyism. They fall in love. For Hawk, this means living an existence of discipline and barriers, hiding who he is so he can build a life working in the government. For Tim, it means losing his career and finding a path that allows him to follow his truth.
In order to survive, Hawk and Tim form a chosen family with two other gay men swept up in the big political and cultural changes happening: journalist Marcus Hooks (Jelani Alladin) and drag-queen-turned-activist Frankie Hines (Noah J. Ricketts).

The family configuration seems improbable, but a certain amount of creative license must be taken to communicate one of the most hate-filled and divisive American issues in eight episodes that cover a period of 40 years.

The Face of Hate

In the face of MAGA hate against the LGBTQAI+ community, it’s easy to forget just how deep anti-LGBTQAI+ hatred has run — and remains — in America. To make matters worse, America’s most conservative evangelical missionaries peddle this same hatred all over Africa.

To be clear, not all Evangelical Christians despise members of the queer community, believing they live in a perpetual state of sin and are dangerous groomers of children.

But the most right-wing among them — the ministers who call Donald Trump God’s emissary on Earth and laid their hands on him in the Oval Office — they peddle hatred against the queer community in America and around the world.

Like Kanye West saying that God talks to him in the shower, instructing him to shut down Planned Parenthood for good, these mostly white people white evangelical leaders and African missionaries say that God has given them their marching orders to purge the planet of LGBTQAI+ humans.

Whoever is murdered or families destroyed in the process, it’s their own fault for not obeying God’s will, says the Trump-loving MAGA crowd.

Tell that to the mother of nine kids, married to her husband for 28 years, who was shot dead over a Pride flag in her California store last Friday.

70 Years Later, the Same Anti-LGBTQAI+, MAGA Hatred Is On Fire in America

On Friday, August 18, 2023 Laura Ann Carleton, a mother of nine children and married to the same man for 28 years, was shot dead in Lake Arrowhead, California because she displayed a Pride flag in her clothing store.

America’s religious crusaders believe she has no right to do that.

The Hollywood Reporter quotes Paul Feig’s IG, with his picture of Carleton in a ‘toasting’ moment among friends, writing that a young man [not yet identified] ripped down the flag in Mag.Pi, the popular progressive woman’s store in her town. When Carleton confronted him about his actions in her store [or outside at the front of her store], the defender of the anti-gay faithful took out his gun and killed her on the spot.

Wait for it . . wait for it . . . here they come with thoughts and prayers . . . “He was mentally ill,” shout the Trump supporters. That’s not US! We just want to make America great again! We’re patriots. YOU stop persecuting us for being God’s chosen people.”

Really? I also was in police protection for a year because one of God’s white men in charge believed that I, too, deserved to die for supporting Planned Parenthood, racial justice and queer people. The MAGA people have a long list of Godly marching orders, and a clear maority of Americans are in their way.

The idea of just shooting us dead for our evil ways has gained much traction in Donald Trump’s America.

A Den of Denial Among 1950s Men

A mindblowing fact about the focus of the Showtime series ‘Fellow Travelers’ is the probable deceptions between the two leading figures in the purge of homosexuals in the US federal goverment in 1953: Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his chief counsel, Roy Cohn.

Even then, Roy Cohn was the subject of hush-hush, anecdotal rumours about his homosexual identity. Cohn was eventually diagnosed with AIDS and died in 1978.

Two more men with interesting biographies are tied to the key figures of ‘Fellow Travelers’. The first is America’s head of the FBI during the 1950s J. Edgar Hoover. The second — years later — is a young man named Donald J. Trump.

Head of the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972, J Edgar Hoover waged a vendetta against homosexuals and kept ‘confidential and secret’ files on the sex lives of congressmen and presidents.

But privately, according to some biographers, Hoover had numerous trysts with men, including a lifelong affair with protégé and his number two Clyde Tolson.

Speaking factually, the two men were nearly inseparable, even in public. Read Tolson’s 1975 obit in the New York Times.

Just as my first landlord in New York was imprisoned for two years for being a “Hollywood Communist” during the McCarthy years, large numbers of gay men and lesbians were fired from government jobs, outed by Sen. McCarthy and Roy Cohn.

The arguments haven’t changed in the last 70 years. As Out writes:

“They were labeled deviants and morally weak. McCarthy and Cohn said that gay people couldn’t be trusted with your children, let alone to run your country. It’s shockingly similar to what’s happening today.”

Executive Order 10450

And then it happened. In 1953, US President Dwight Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450, which resulted in the purge of large numbers of LGBTQAI+ people in the federal government.

Squarespace AI has worked with me to write this article and to provide lots of nuanced but critical-thinking information.

For example, contrary to what Out writes, Executive Order 10450 did not bar homosexuals from working in government. But it did have that end result, because LGBTQAI+ people were identified as a national security risk — suggesting that they could be easily blackmailed.

It’s absolutely true that almost overnight, over 5,000 people were not only fired but ‘outed’ to their families and communities, as a result of the implementation of Executive Order 10450. And now — 70 years later — America’s LGBTQAI+ community and its supporters like Anne of Carversville are again under assault.

Anti-LGBTQ legislation with the promise of right-wing autocracy rule is the promised lynch pin for MAGA-elected candidates at every level of American politics — from the local school board to the Oval Office of the US President in Washington, DC.

For all in the MAGA crowd who suggest that we exaggerate, respond with the name of the now dead mother of nine, with a husband of 28 years, murdered in cold blood, because she supported queer rights with a PRIDE flag in/outside her store, and explain to us why she deserved to die.

Say her name, Trump lovers, about the woman murdered in cold blood in your name and your so-called Godly values: