Gay Controversy Erupts Over 'Heroes'

You know, queer. Homosexual. A boi toy. Words and descriptions Dekker's manager apparently doesn't want to hear.

The "Heroes" episode "Homecoming" was not just about the homecoming dance where some of the heroes would have to save the cheerleader, it also was supposed to be where Zach -- in a Rosie O'Donnell moment -- tells the audience what we figured out already: He's gay. Instead, however, Zach spews out a bunch of non-sensical lines that continues to imply he's gay without really coming out (pun intended) and saying it.

The blog site After Elton speculates that NBC -- which reportedly already had problems with Zach as a gay character according to previous interviews with show creator Tim Kring and producer Bryan Fuller -- had something to do with why Zach went from gay to somewhere in between. The site also speculated that Dekker's management team also may have had something to do with the sudden change, something TV Guide's Michael Ausiello picked up on in his weekly Ask Ausiello column.

"Someone objected to the plot, and my sources tell me it was not NBC, but rather Dekker's camp that came down with a severe case of gay panic syndrome," Ausiello said. "In fact, there's speculation that Dekker's manager threatened to pull her client from the show unless the story was changed. Rather tellingly, said manager promised to get back to me with a comment yesterday but never did."

Kring himself has entered the most recent round of discussions, telling After Elton in an e-mail that the problem lied squarely on the complexities of putting together a show for network television.

"It was certainly not our intention to confuse the issue of Zach's character being gay," Kring told the Web site. "We have too much respect for our audience to do that intentionally. However, it has simply become too complicated behind the scenes to push this issue further with this particular character. We apologize for misleading the audience, and wish that we could have handled things better on our end."

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