Fridae

In what's was probably the most exciting gay versus straight showdown in reality TV history, gay 'married' couple Reichen Lehmkuhl and Chip Arndt won The Amazing Race 4 finale Thursday, prevailing over bickering straight couple Kelly Parks and Jon Corso - who came in a very close second.

The couple, nicknamed 'Chippendales' by Kelly, competed with 11 other two-person teams in a race around the world, beginning in Los Angeles and continuing through Milan, Venice, Vienna, Paris, Marseille, Amsterdam, Mumbai (India), Malaysia, Seoul, Australia and Hawaii before winning the US$1 million prize. Finalists and best friends David Dean and Jeff Strand, who had otherwise stayed near the top the entire race, came in a distant third after being stranded in Sydney while Reichen and Chip and Kelly and Jon battled it out from Hawaii to the finishing line at Phoenix, Arizona's Papago Park.

Twenty-eight-year-old Reichen is a pilot and now runs a private charter airline called Tribe Airways was a graduate of the US Air Force academy and a former US Air Force officer while Chip, 36, is a Yale and Harvard Business School graduate who is now a financial consultant specialising in funding entertainment projects.

The pair who have been rumoured to have broken up after the race told elitestv.com, a website for reality TV programmes, that the rumours are not accurate and the couple are working on their 5-year relationship.

"The stress since we got back from the Amazing Race, has taken a big toll on my and Chip's relationship, and we've had some problems, but we've committed to working on those problems and we're still in that process. The overriding thing is that we love each other very much. It's always been our goal to make each other happy, and when another person's not happy, and you know that, it's going to be time to bail out. I think that's the goal is to make sure that the other person is as happy as they can be. It's no different now, that's the goal we're trying to reach, and we're working on it. That's all I can say, there's no real black and white answer, sorry." Reichen said.

The pair, who is not only gay but also considered themselves married, has been a source of controversy even before the first episode was telecast. Since CBS gave the go ahead for the pair to promoted in all of its marketing material as "married," fringe religious groups have fervently protested the TV network's decision. Some have also expressed outrage that a gay 'married' couple - who was not even allowed to legally consummate their marriage until June 24 this year when the US Supreme Court overturned all laws banning gay sex - have been let into their homes through a prime-time TV programme.

Mike Haley, manager of the Gender Issues Department at Focus on the Family, an antigay organisation that lobbies against gay rights called the term an "aberration" and "a lie� crafted to promote a political agenda."

When antigay activists protested the show's premiere, a CBS spokeswoman retorted: "Why can't they say they're married? What's the difference?"

---

Reichen, who himself thinks their approach was "revolutionary," reportedly told US gay magazine The Advocate, "Yeah, you know what? If the state isn't going to recognise the rights that people want to have, then the people will go ahead and recognise that for the state." He added that his participation in the Amazing Race is a "personal vendetta" against all those who made you feel bad for being gay.

The show's producers have dismissed their claims and said that the show has had an inclusive agenda since the first season where there is at least one gay team member in each season. The first Race featured two middle-aged life partners; in the second, two Latino gay men made up a team while the third included three gay men, although each of them had a straight teammate.

The pair screamed and cried at the finish line after host Phil Keoghan announced that they had won.

Reichen told CBS' "The Early Show" on Friday: "When we went into this and found out that we were going to be on the Race, we said, 'We're gay and we'd like to show America that gay people can do anything straight people can do.' There's such a stereotype of the feminine, homosexual male and we wanted to break that and show that we can do anything."

"This Race was about a lot of things," said the current flight instructor in the season finale. "It was about competitiveness. It was about showing the world that gay people can do anything that anyone else can do. But the most important thing I learned is that I'm very loved by my partner, and I can feel safe and happy and protected when I'm around him."

"I sometimes think people perceive all gay people as really queeny and really effeminate, but I want other people to look at us and see strong, prepared and out to win."

"There's no way I could've gotten through this without Reichen's support and patience. What I realized throughout the race is how much I need him and how much he needs me," added Chip.

Reichen will appear in a documentary film investigating the US military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The film, which is produced by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, will cover the 10-year history of the policy and follow the building political momentum to overturn it, according to its press release.