The founder of the gay-press syndication company Q Syndicate, David Bianco, announced to staff and contributors Jan. 16 that he is selling his remaining share of the company to Rivendell Marketing because he is no longer gay.
Rivendell, which places ads in the gay press, bought most of Q Syndicate from Bianco in 2001.
Q Syndicate is the world's largest gay-press content provider, unless more column inches are filled by the Associated Press news wire service.
Bianco said he will continue to write his syndicated 'Over The Rainbow' column in which he recently announced that, for religious reasons, he no longer has sex with men. Bianco is Jewish.
'Nobody asked me to leave [the company] because of my column,' Bianco said in an interview. 'But the fact that I no longer consider myself gay meant I was uncomfortable having gay journalism be my life's work.
'I believe that within a couple years I'm probably going to be married with a growing family, God willing,' he said.
In another recent column, Bianco denounced gays and lesbians who have babies, calling them 'selfish' for purposefully depriving offspring of a mother or father.
Q Syndicate content which appears in local gay and lesbian newspapers includes Hastings Wyman's Capital Letters, Romeo San Vicente's Deep Inside Hollywood, Paula Martinac's Lesbian Notions, Andrew Collins' Out of Town, the history column Past Out and Simon Sheppard's Sex Talk.
(Rex Wockner briefly worked part-time as a Q Syndicate consultant several years ago.)