The man behind the gay rights
organization Soulfource and his bisexual son will appear on the
fourteenth season of the Emmy-winning CBS reality competition The
Amazing Race.
Mel White and his son Mike White will
make up one of the globetrotting teams that will travel over 40,000
miles in 22 days to nine countries in a race to win a million
dollars.
Mel spent nearly 30 years writing
speeches and ghostwriting books for anti-gay televangelists such as
Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham. During this time, Mel
married his wife Lyla and the pair had two children.
An attempted suicide after failing to
“cure” himself of being gay through prayer, electroconvulsive
therapy and even exorcism brought him out of the closet.
In 1984, Mel admitted he was gay and
transferred his ministerial credentials to the gay-affirming
Metropolitan Community Church. Mel married his longtime boyfriend
last year in California.
At 68, Mel is the oldest contestant in
this year's race.
The fourteenth installment of Race
includes, for the first time, a stop in Romania as well as
Switzerland, India and Russia.
“We shot in the city of Krasnoyarsk
and the city of Novosibirsk,” said Amazing Race executive
producer Bertram van Munster. “The teams get from one city to
another via the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Of course, it started off
nice, but we got into this Siberian snowstorm with below-zero
temperatures, which we weren't used to. It was pretty exciting.”
The Amazing Race premieres Sunday,
February 15 on CBS.