May 14, 2004  |  By: Brian Moylan  | COMMENTS     

CRAIG TUMINARO AND Jonathon Allen portray indentured servants on “Colonial House,” a fascinating eight-part series on PBS that involves having 26 people live by the laws and customs of English colonists in 1628.

What sets Tuminaro and Allen apart from the others, however, is that both are openly gay — in real life and in their 17th century portrayals on the show, which debuts at 8 p.m., Monday, May 17, on WETA, a local PBS affiliate.

On “Colonial House,” participants simulate what life must have been like in the 17th century, using the tools, wearing the clothes, obeying the laws, and tolerating the punishments to which the first Europeans in the United States were subjected.

The 26 participants on the show, who were given a small stipend and selected from a pool of 5,000, have roles on the “Colonial House” as the ruling governor, free men, as well as indentured servants. They were expected to play out those roles for five months at a rural site on the coast of Maine.

Coming out in the 17th century did not pose a challenge for Tuminaro, an architectural historian who lives in Alexandra, Va.

“I told people in exactly the way I wanted to tell them, just as I do in my modern life,” he says, “[I] didn’t make a huge proclamation [that I’m gay].”

Tuminaro was part of the second wave of colonists that joined the show after the first two months, and stayed for the remaining three. His openness, in part, inspired Allen, 25, who signed on to appear on the series for the full five months.

Allen, who works at a hotel in Charleston, S.C., came out to the entire colonial community at one of the mandatory Sunday Sabbath meetings.

“I had been closeted two months and [Tuminaro] told me in the first five minutes, and I wanted to be that confident,” says Allen, who in real life is out to his family and some friends, though he says most people do not know he is gay.

Allen, who is originally from South Carolina, says he grew up in a conservative Southern Baptist family.

JEFF WYERS, A conservative Southern Baptist minister from Waco, Texas, portrays the governor of the colony on the show and has autocratic control of the work, laws and moral standards of the community. He makes some very disparaging remarks about Allen’s public acknowledgement of his sexual orientation.

Nevertheless, Tuminaro and Allen were allowed to live as openly gay servants in the colony. In the 17th century, however, Tuminaro said homosexuality was a crime that was punished harshly, possibly even by death.

“My understanding of the whole concept of self-identification wasn’t really something that took place in the 17th century,” Tuminaro says. “I don’t know if there was a punishment for saying that you enjoyed homosexual behavior, as opposed to someone getting caught in the act.”

Allen says he and the other colonists tried to mirror the time period as honestly as they could.

“Maybe there wasn’t a guy in 1628 who stood up and said he was gay, but surely there were gay guys back then,” Allen says. “Because we don’t have too much [historical evidence] to go on, I think that we were an honest, 17th-century colony.”