Good neighbors: how a young gay Texan and his dad reunited thanks to Welcome to the Neighborhood, ABCs canceled reality show.

One of 2005's happier TV endings came about thanks to a reality show the public never saw. ABC opted not to go forward with its hopeful-homeowners competition, Welcome to the Neighborhood, afLer groups including the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and equal-housing advocates voiced concern that the series would aggravate the very problem it addressed--housing discrimination in America.

Yet the show led to a new beginning for a real-life dad and the gay son he'd never been able to accept.

Neighborhood followed seven families of various ethnicities, races, and religions including a white gay couple with an adopted African-American baby--as they competed for a home valued at an estimated $300,000 in the upscale Circle C subdivision of Austin, a largely conservative, Caucasian enclave presumably not marked by support for gay rights. The criterion for winning: not how much the family needed the house but how well they would fit in with a close group of neighbors who lived in a cul-de-sac in Circle C and gathered regularly for holidays and weekend family entertainment.

One of the judges was Jim Stewart, a 53-year-old Circle C resident who works in sales for a food processing company, drinks beer, hunts deer, and would be flattered to be compared to John Wayne. Stewart didn't love gays.

Speaking to The Advocate in his first interview with the gay press, Stewart is frank about his "conflicts with the gay family," Steve and John Wright (Steve had changed his name to make it easier for the couple te adopt a child).

The conflicts went both ways. As Stewart recalls it, one day Steve Wright told him, "'I don't understand the redneck issue.' I fired back, 'I don't understand the gay issue and don't care to.'"

Neither the producers nor the neighbors knew that Jim had a gay son from his first marriage. Jason Stewart, now 25, had come out to his dad a few years earlier while home from college.

His father's reaction back then: "Check your gayness at the door. We don't want to participate [in] or support your lifestyle in any way."

Jason's announcement that he was gay "totally floored me," says Jim Stewart. "It was like being hit in the head with a bat. Jason had been captain of the football team. I had had no reservations that anything was wrong or out of place. He was all you'd want in a son."

When he came home to see his dad for the holidays, Jason agreed to the "don't toll" policy. "I was very angry and hurt," he says, '"out I didn't want to lose my connection with the family and my little brother [from Jim's second marriage]. It's twice as hard to rekindle a relationship with your parents if you write them off because they won't accept you as gay. All the holidays you miss together, the 'first' times of everything. There were times when I felt like, I'm his son, but how deep does that love go?" says Jason, whose mother and stepmother were more accepting and supportive. "My dad's love was conditional, and I would compare that te my little stepbrother, who was loved unconditionally." Jason knew his dad was "a man that sticks to his guns and is not going to change. I know, rm just like him. But I never gave up on him."

Jason couldn't have known that his dad would vote to award the gay couple on Neighborhood the show's top prize: the house next door to Jim Stewart.

Jim says all the contestants--including African-American and Asian families, a family that practices Wicca, and a family with a stripper morn--were deserving. But "the Wrights were right for the neighborhood," he says. "They're classy people. Friendly. You couldn't ask for better neighbors."

What transformed him? During the six episodes, Jim had gotten to know the Wrights. "I began visiting with the gay family and realized they are just like everybody else." Over dinner one night, Jim asked John what a day in the life of a gay man is like. "John said he'd been chased, spit on, beat up, and humiliated," Jim says. "And I started thinking that discriminating against my own son was the worst discrimination there is. As the show went on, it dawned on me that being gay is not a choice. I didn't understand it's in the DNA. I realized prejudice is through fear or ignorance, and in my case, I had both."

Two weeks after the show finished taping and Jim had done a lot of soul-searching, he called Jason. Jason was unprepared for what his dad had to say.

"The call came out of nowhere," he says. "My dad told me he loved me unconditionally and was a changed person and ashamed of how he treated me in the past and that he would accept me and anyone in my life--that was a huge decision. I was crying in my car."

Now, Jim says, he knows that "being a redneck is not cast in stone." What's more, he's proud of how his elder son handled their difficult times. "Jason had truly been the better man," he says.

As for Jason, he finally has a fatherson relationship. "I feel now that if anything happens to me personally, he'd be there for me, and I have never felt that before," he says. "The connection we are having is amazing and so important."

Jim showed his son he believed that gays should have the right to be families by standing on the state capitol steps at a rally opposing a state constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage. The proposition passed on November 8, but Jason was proud of his dad.

Jim would like America to see Welcome to the Neighborhood. "I think for America to see everyone on the block, not just me, transformed and confronting their prejudices, it would benefit the gay community and other contestants. Feelings unfolded and were released in ways I don't think will be captured again."

ABC declined comment.

TOP 10 television

1 Six Feet Under The final season of creator Alan Bali's brilliant HBO series was moving, unexpected, and clever. We'll miss our family, but at least we know how they die.

2 Postcards From Buster The PBS series took kids to Vermont to visit with some lesbian moms, and to D.C. to visit with the homophobes who pulled the episode.

3 Noah's Arc Smart, sexy gay men of color coupling and uncoupling and making us blush, laugh, and sniffle. A dream of creator Patrik-lan Polk finds reality on Logo.

4 Nip/Tuck Many of us are latecomers to this sly, steely plastic-surgery soap, but loyal fans recognized Ryan Murphjs twisted genius when his series premiered in 2003.

5 Logo's launch: Varla Jean Herman explaining Stonewall and the terrific doc The Evolution Will Be Televised made the debut evening an event of true promise.

6 The Long Firm Jake Arnott's page-turner about a ruthless queer gangster became a compelling BBC miniseries with Mark Strong as the brutal, charismatic Harry Starks.

7 Project Runway From the flighty fabulousness of Austin Scarlett to the outrageous snark of winner 3ay HcCarroll, Bravo's fashion reality show had us hooked.

8 Lackawanna Blues Ace theater director George C. Wolfe scored a TV hit with this period tale of one dauntless black businesswoman and her boarding house.

9 TransGeneration The Sundance Channel and Logo placed a spotlight on a rarely-heard-from set--college-age trans folk-resulting in eye-opening television.

10 Third Nan Out This first entry in Here TVs gay detective series, starring Chad Allen as Donald Strachey, stirred our appetite for further trips into New York's gay underworld.

In a category all its own

Party Line With the Hearty Boys A fresh new kind of reality TV, with real-life couple Dan and Steve offering cooking tips on the Food Network. What took so long?

Martin has written for many alternative and mainstream publications including McCall's and The Austin Chronicle.