It was on January 2, 1998 that NBC aired an episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street" titled ‘Closet Cases' during which Baltimore-based thirtysomething detective Tim Bayliss (played by Kyle Secor) acknowledged his attraction to men. In the following episode, Homicide's writers re-established Bayliss's interest in women, while making it clear that he was not closing the door on the possibility of dating men.

Secor gives an extensive interview to AfterElton.com that delves more deeply into the character of Bayliss than I have ever read elsewhere. I was fascinated with this complex character and remember well the episode in which Peter Gallagher (playing a gay bar owner) asked Bayliss out on a date and Bayliss said YES!

"Homicide," which ran from 1993 to 1999, was released this week for the first time as a complete series DVD set. Here are some excepts from the article or you can click HERE to read it in its entirety:

One of the reasons why Bayliss's storyline is interesting for a queer audience, even before his coming out, is because of what can be seen as his ambiguous feelings for his arrogant, prickly detective partner, Frank Pembleton (played by Andre Braugher).

Secor referred to Pembleton and Bayliss's “very kind of ‘old married couple' relationship�, describing them jokingly as “the deeply involved couple who didn't have sex anymore�. Of the show's ambiguous dialogue, he says that:
“It's the writers, and Tom Fontana. He can split that dialogue both ways. Andre and I had many talks about it. And in a lot of the relationships in the show you see that, where the partners are very intimate with each other. They generally care a great deal about each other, and about their personal lives, and it feels like, you know, they know each other better than potentially their husbands or wives might know them, or boyfriends or girlfriends. So it was very intimate, what we were all going through.�

Even pre-coming out, Bayliss's storyline had been phrased in terms of self-discovery, and particularly sexual self-discovery.

An early episode delved into his discomfort in dealing with an S&M murder, suggesting that it was perhaps partly due to his own repression. Then he winds up sleeping with a woman in a coffin. A Season 3 episode seems to have him confessing that he had some homosexual experiences as a young man. On a darker note, Season 5 also saw him acknowledging and confronting the sexual abuse he had suffered from his uncle as a child.

Secor, who is straight, says he thinks that Bayliss was attracted to men before the ‘Closet Cases' episode: “I think that he had had fantasies, but he'd never acted on it before. I mean I really think that with the Peter Gallagher character, that was the first time. [Being attracted to men was] something he had been aware of... you know, it could be in the corner of his eye, looking over, seeing someone, and then just going on and doing his business, but never... But stuff with women didn't work either. And, you know, in a sense, [he was] almost, like - ‘There's gotta be something else. There's gotta be something else. Oh, men understand me much better than women. Let's see if this [could work].'�