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Vol 1. No 3. December, 1997
Queer of the Month
At the age of 9, Gene Kuffel watched his first Miss USA pageant on television and decided that winning a beauty contest was the sole road to happiness. The next morning he asked his mother whether he could ever enter such a competition.
"She said, ‘No, you can’t - that’s for women," remembers Kuffel, now a 33-year old who teaches 6th grade in New Jersey. "I asked, ‘Is there one for boys?’ And she said ‘Yes there’s Mr. USA.’ And so I said, ‘OK, then I’m going to be Mr. USA.’ "
If you had told Kuffel’s mother that her son would win the Mr USA International 1997 contest and that he would be the American representative at the Mr International competition this month, she probably would have visualised her son flexing his muscles on a stage, acting as a paragon of heterosexuality.
Instead, he has decided to use the title as a platform from which to announce that he is gay.
"This title is supposed to be the search for America’s most outsanding gentleman," Kuffel says. "Well, he’s also gay too."
Kuffel hopes that by disclosing his oxientation before his reign ends he might serve as a model for other gay people.
"Wouldn’t it have been nice," he says, "for us to have known that Greg Lougaunis was gay prioir to his competing in the Olympics?"
– Advocate
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