Dec 14, 2007   | COMMENTS     

THESE DAYS ON REALITY television you have to compete hard to get anywhere. If contestants aren’t literally fighting in shows like Discovery’s “Last Man Standing” then they’re metaphorically duking it out on shows like “Project Runway” or “America’s Next Top Model.” For heaven’s sake, there’s even a new NBC show about singing groups called “Clash of the Choirs.”

In this rough-and-tumble reality environment, it’s good that gay couple Paul Anderson and Shaun McCarron, both 25, found fame the old-fashioned way: they were discovered.

When the co-habitating pair was visiting Los Angeles from Orlando, Fla. — where Anderson works as a massage therapist and runs a spa and McCarron is wrapping up his MBA with a focus in hospitality management — they were just chilling at a friend’s barbecue, and who shows up but Janice Dickinson, the self-appointed world’s first supermodel and reality TV maven.

“We were like, ‘What the fuck?’” says Anderson. “We just had a good time, and at the end of the night, she asked if I had modeled before and I said I had, and I left my name and number on her cell phone. She directed me to a producer of the show, and I got a phone call a few weeks later, asking what they could offer us to be on season three.”

That’s the third season of Dickinson’s Oxygen reality show “The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency,” which started Dec. 4 and airs new episodes each Tuesday at 10:30 p.m.

Of course, things got off to a predictable start on the show with the loud-mouthed Dickinson.

“When we first met her … we gave her champagne and she didn’t like it and she spit it out and took the glass and tossed it across the yard. She said, ‘What is this shit? I’m not drinking this cat piss,’” Anderson recalls.

Luckily, they say they were never on the receiving end of her barb-laden tirades against her models.

“She was always really nice to us,” McCarron says. “She really likes gay guys, I don’t know why, and she adored Paul and I — Paul more than me, I think. In front of clients, she would always say nice things.”

ANDERSON AND MCCARRON aren’t the only gay models on the show this season. Former “Survivor” contestant J.P. Calderone, who came out on the second cycle of the program, is back for another go.

Gay, Brazilian-born Rodrigo De Carli is also out of the closet. What he wasn’t so open about with the producers of the show was his past in gay porn, which supposedly wasn’t discovered until after the season wrapped up filming. If this hunk looks familiar, check your porn stash for a copy of a movie starring Claudio Martin, which was De Carli’s nom de smut.

And while Anderson and McCarron are willing to strip to their skivvies to model for companies like Go Software, they’re not up for the full monty.

“I have friends who are porn stars, and I have no problem with them doing it, but I think I would let myself down and my family down if I was naked in front of millions of people,” McCarron says.

What they both say they want to do in front of millions of people is draw some attention to the fight for gay marriage equality, pointing people in the direction of programs by HRC and other groups working to secure equal marriage rights.

“I think [being a gay couple on the show] helps open some eyes and [put] the focus back on the issues again,” Anderson says. “You can’t just let things happen as they happen, you need to take action. Society needs that slap in the face, saying to people, ‘Wake up, we’re not done yet.’”

Of course, they have selfish reasons for getting gays the right to marry. When asked if he and Anderson would like to tie the knot, McCarron says, “I’d love to have that chance, but now you really have to fight for it.”

Luckily, now that the filming is finished, they’re so busy fighting for the right to walk down the aisle together that they won’t be challenging others to win some silly reality television crown.