Former Israeli Military Trainer and Gay Porn Star Found Dead of Apparent Suicide

This is the exact reason why I chose to start this website, to help bring awareness to topics such depression and anxiety among gay men.  A beautiful man, perfect on the outside, assumed  to have it all, dead. Little did anyone know that Dror Barak, 38, now come to find out was struggling with some major depression issues. We need to push forward and get the conversation started on the topic of mental health. We need to diminish the stigma behind mental health issues and make it okay to talk about. Roman, whose real name was Dror Barak, should still be with us today.

UPDATE: We received a note from Dror’s boyfriend Sam who confirmed the sad news and asked that people be respectful with regards to Dror’s privacy in the comments.

Sam writes:

Details are mostly personal depression issues.

His business was doing amazingly well and was expanding rapidly and he was so busy he literally could not take any more clients on himself he had to hire more trainers. So it had nothing to do with that. I only say this because he was so proud of his business and I was so proud of him for being such a hard worker and building a business with dedicated top level personal training clients.

Despite what anyone thinks Dror was a loving kind person and anyone that would comment and say he wasn’t just probably misinterpreted his shyness as meanness. He was the most gentle, loving, kind, amazing man I have ever met.

Dror Barak, 38, was found dead Saturday night of an apparent suicide. A former Israeli military trainer who achieved stardom under the name Roman Ragazzi, Barak hadn’t been active in porn since 2008. He left the industry to concentrate on a fitness company he founded.

While working as an administrative aide for the Israeli Consulate scandal Barak Barak was outed as a porn star in 2007 by the New York Post’s Page Six gossips, resulting in a minor scandal. He resigned, then later started a fitness blog as well as what some say was a legendary career in porn. His boyfriend told a gay porn blog (NSFW) that though Barak’s business was going well, he suffered from depression.

It’s rumored that male porn stars have a very high rate of suicide, and according to this list posted on a NSFW blog, there appears to be some truth to the rumor. Susannah Breslin tried to explain the reasoning for this strange phenomenon over at Salon after the suicide of porn star Stephen Hill.

[article via Out Magazine]

Openly gay Temple Gymnast Dash Sears also Mr. Gay Philadelphia “not short … but fun-sized”

Junior Temple University gymnast Dash Sears is the reigning Mr. Gay Philadelphia, winning the title last spring. He is one of two openly gay gymnasts on the team, along with Evan Burke, who is out this season with a broken foot (last year’s team had a third gay gymnast, John Gaffney).

Thanks to our friend Dan Anders, below is a gallery of Sears, 21, competing at a meet this month. On his profile page at Mr. Gay, Sears — who stands 5-2, describes himself as “not short … but fun-sized,” adding:

I’m both a political theorist AND activist with stints supporting Occupy Philadelphia and talking to LGBT youth about coming out and growing up gay moving from a small town in PA to a big city. If you’re not an actor you’ll never be a factor. It’s time we show that the LGBT community is made up of people that deserve rights and freedoms [not corporations). Have a very gay day! 

Instinct Magazine last year had a terrific profile of Sears, Burke and Gaffney and the bond they formed. There is a funny anecdote of how Sears came out to his parents, surrounded by his entire team:

“[It was] after a competition in Annapolis, at a Chili’s,” he says, with a laugh. “I had the entire team around me. They didn’t know I was going to come out, but I thought, ‘If it’s going to be awkward for me, it was going to be awkward for everyone!’ It was funny though, and we all laughed about it on the way home. My parents kind of knew, but they wanted to hear it from me.”

Competition photos of Sears by Dan Anders. Check out his complete February Temple gymnastics photo gallery. NoH8 photo of Sears from the NoH8 campaign

via outsports.com