About the Author
Brett White is a pop culture journalist working as a Senior Reporter/Producer for Decider. Through his work at Decider, Brett uses his overlapping passions for gay history and TV history to spotlight many important queer creators and works in a way that is accessible to today's readers. This work ranges from critical analysis of "gay of the week" episodes of sitcoms like Cheers and The Bob Newhart Show to historical deep dives into the lives of men like Raymond Burr, Charles Nelson Reilly, and Paul Lynde. Brett frequently finds a way to tie this history into current events, by framing the piece about Burr's homosexuality around the current HBO update of Perry Mason, and by writing at length about RuPaul's Drag Race's spiritual connection to The Carol Burnett Show. Prior to joining Decider, Brett covered slightly less gay pop culture for Comic Book Resources, Marvel.com, and MTV News.
As a lifelong sitcom fan and gay man himself, Brett White is really the one person who can write The Doctor Is Out! But more specifically, it's Brett's indefatigable desire to preserve gay history that really makes him the man for the job—and also the first man for the job. Literally, that's what Jus's relatives and the librarians in charge of Hayden's personal archives told him. What started as an episode of Brett's podcast Must Have Seen TV about Hayden's life has become a yearlong journey into the secret gay history of America.
And to drop the third-person bit and get more personal than is perhaps needed: finding out that the men I watched on TV as a deeply, cluelessly closeted child were, in fact, gay like me is profoundly validating and emboldening. That's especially true of gay men like Hayden Rorke, whose unashamedly gay life stands apart from so many other, well-known gay stories. I've spent decades honing this writing ability thing of mine in order to tell Hayden's story. It's my big, gay purpose.
