Cover Story

Ben Patrick Johnson - voicing LGBT issues

By Matt Kailey

NFL Network presents Thursday night football, and it's your prime time home for the Bills ...

If the visual you create to go with the forceful baritone blasting from your television set to announce an upcoming sports match-up includes a beer-guzzling, tough-talking straight man ... well, your ears have deceived you.

Ben Patrick Johnson is the openly gay man - and the voice - behind many of the sports commercials, public service announcements and youth programming blurbs that you hear on TV - and what a voice he has! Even over the telephone, the impressiveness of his instrument - we're talking about his well-developed vocal cords - comes through.

But it shouldn't be a surprise. Johnson's parents, who were liberal Christian missionaries, noticed the unusual strength and sound of his voice even before puberty.

"My voice has always been unusual," he says. "When I was very small child, my parents actually took me into the doctor to have my hearing tested, because sometimes when young children have an unusually deep or resonant voice, it can be indicative of a hearing problem."

But there was no hearing problem. Johnson was not only gifted with extraordinarily good looks, but also with a voice to match and an interest in media that led to a professional voice-over career beginning at age 16.

"It was this amazing good fortune that when my voice did change, it developed into what it's become," he says. Although he did have some training later in life - one-on-one coaching along with acting and improv classes - it focused primarily on how to use his gift. The sexy sound is nature-made.

Johnson's skills and appearance eventually landed him an on-camera job as the first host of the Warner Bros. television show Extra. But when he came out as gay in the fall of 1994, his face soon disappeared from the screen.

"They held meetings with me to discuss what they referred to as 'the problem,'" he says. "And they wanted to start doing coaching sessions so that if I had interviews, how I could avoid dealing with the fact that I was gay - how to subtly steer the conversation away from that. The heads of publicity at Warner Bros. - some of them, I feel fairly sure, were gay themselves - were sitting down, and the executive producer at the time of the show, seemed very, very concerned with this. Now, is this what caused my demotion? I won't say that. And they have taken a policy of, since that time, simply not commenting. But it certainly did coincide, and there certainly was an internal uproar, and then a few days later, I was demoted - so you work out the math however you like."

Being demoted at Extra, though, proved to be a benefit in disguise, because it allowed Johnson time to pursue his other love since childhood - writing.

"I had a no-cut contract," he says. "And once they sidelined me, I just sat at my desk every day and I wrote. My very first book I wrote largely while I was at Extra, just cooling my heels. I don't think I could just do the voice-overs. I think my soul would starve. I need to write."

In fact, Johnson has written four books, including the recently released If the Rains Don't Cleanse, a complete departure from his first three - In and Out in Hollywood, Third and Heaven: A Novel and One Size Fits All - which were semi-autobiographical.

"I started working on it almost 14 years ago, all the while growing up," he says. "My family is very much of a storytelling family, and I heard all these anecdotes growing up about my parents' time in Africa. And it seemed like a bunch of tall tales to me. ... But I decided that it was time to distill them from sort of an anthropological perspective into something and to try to capture this really amazing family history before it was simply gone - before my parents were dead and it was gone for good."

So far, the book - with a female protagonist, no less - has been well-received. But almost everything that Johnson does is popular - like his 2006-2007 podcast, Life from the Left Coast, which, among other things, provided a vehicle for his examination of one of the most important issues in his current life - the rise of fundamentalism.

"I did the podcast for several reasons," he says. "It was a way for me to give myself a brush-up course in presenting on camera and being an anchor and a spokesperson. ... The things I wanted to talk about have become more pressing, and I wanted my skill set to be on par with my passion, since I have not been in front of a camera on a daily, weekly, basis for some years, as well as giving me a platform to actually say some of the stuff that I wanted to say. I started out just wanting this for me, but then the numbers were surprisingly there. People started watching. We were getting as many as 5,000 to 10,000 hits per day. I was thrilled with that."

But Johnson, who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome, became exhausted from the grueling schedule that involved the podcast, writing, bodybuilding, philanthropy work and his full-time voice-over work. In addition, the podcast production costs began to exceed $10,000 a week. He decided that he had accomplished his goals and that it was time to move on.

One of his focuses now is the Ben Patrick Johnson Foundation, which he established to help fund human rights causes, allowing him a comprehensive vehicle for his own personal giving.

The Foundation funds such diverse causes as hunger and education in developing nations. But it also supports LGBT causes, including marriage equality, about which Johnson is passionate, even though he is single.

"I regret that I am not [partnered]," he says. "It's a bit of an irony that I'm working as much as I do for marriage equality and I don't yet have a special person at this point to stand at the alter with and benefit from that. But I certainly hope that's in my future. I've had some stormy relationships, some of which I've chronicled - and not too thinly veiled - in my earlier novels. The character Freddie in my first three books is basically me, and you get to see a lot of his foibles, which are really reflective of my own."

For now, Johnson is turning his attention to his concerns over the current resurgence of fundamentalism throughout the world and its effect on the LGBT community.

"I think one of the significant impediments, if not the single biggest impediment, to us not having what we're looking for in terms of marriage acceptance and laws that embrace us," he says, "is the counter-influence that comes from the pulpit - from the minister, from the rabbi, from the imam, in our churches, synagogues, temples, mosques - which tell us that gay is not OK, is wrong. And particularly, I think, globally, the rise of fundamentalism in recent years ... has a damning influence on our development as a larger society and certainly for the advancement of LGBT people taking our fair and proper place in society. Rather than condemn folks, though, I think the answer is to build bridges, to start conversations - rather than ramp up the rhetoric, to work to thaw the ice that is there. It's a test for us."
Johnson says he is surprised and disheartened when his friends refuse to go to church with him.

"If you're not going to put yourself in these peoples' path and show them your humanity, how do you expect to become accepted?" he says. "So gay folks, go to church, go to temple, talk to your family, talk to your friends, talk to people of faith - let's start these conversations. It's vital."

With his voice, Johnson's conversations should convince anyone.

For more information, go to www.benpatrickjohnson.com.