The Judges Decloak

The judges in our Queer Of The Year Readers Poll spent the weekend in heated battle as they reviewed your nominations and pleaded the cases of their favorites to each other. At one point a conference call was proposed, but that idea got tabled after a hundred or so rounds of "Reply To All" emails. Consensus was difficult to achieve, but finally arrived in the form of a sixth finalist, as all judges were loathe to lop off any of their favorites. Therefore, voting on the SIX finalists for Queer Of The Year will commence shortly.

Listed below, in no particular order, are the judges' self-penned bios. As you may have guessed, all are fellow bloggers. They live in three time zones and and range in age from 20's to 50's, so I think we got a nicely wide spectrum of gay experiences and perspectives. They are an inspirational group and I thank them for their hard work on this project.

- GayProf. As his unimaginative moniker implies, GayProf is a gay professor. He teaches courses on race, gender, and sexuality in United States history. He is currently on-loan to a greater-Boston-area institute, kinda like a museum piece. His blog, Center Of Gravitas, is distinctive for his Wonder Woman fixation.We try not to talk about it too much.

- Chris Hampton has been blogging at Uffish Thoughts since blogging wasn't cool. By day, she works at a Big Gay Nonprofit, and in her spare time she curates and emcees the WYSIWYG Talent Show, an all-blogger reading and performance series that has been going strong in NYC for almost three years now. She grew up in Arkansas but has since fully recovered.

- John Whiteside, who started out in New England and now calls Houston, Texas home, has been blogging at By the Bayou for longer than he cares to admit. He also writes a reader blog on the Houston Chronicle web site called Blue Bayou, where he does his part to spread the word about progressive politics and gay issues in the Lone Star State.

- Chris Brandon is TIME magazine's Person of the Year. He is the proprietor of the weblog boysbriefs and a frequent contributor to user-generated sites like Flickr,Wikipedia and Digg.com. He and his boyfriend recently moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to live with their two dogs in an historic home. Hemisses the city.

- Richard Rothstein. Public relations expert by day, blogger by night, Richard Rothstein spends most of his free time trying to be half the man his dogs believe him to be. Biggest fear: his clients will discover his blog and he'll have to spend his final days living off his cache of Jew gold.

Again, huge thanks to the judges!