What's Your Greatest Fear?

Photos by Andrea Krauss, Daniel G. Lam & Daniel Reynolds

What's your greatest fear? Snakes? Ebola? Bianca Del Rio? The Advocate asked the stars at the Ninth Annual Fred and Jason's Halloweenie, one of the sexiest and scariest annual fundraisers in Los Angeles, what makes their skin crawl. And we wanted to share with Out readers.

In addition to personal anxieties, stars like Lance Bass, Steve Grand, Jai Rodriguez, Wilson Cruz, Pandora Boxx, and more revealed their broader fears for the LGBT community. The answers, ranging from apathy to division to ignorance of divadom, touched at the heart of the charitable nature of the evening, which raised funds for the Gay Men's Choir of Los Angeles and its antibullying program for schools, its youth chorus, and the It Gets Better Tour.

Take a look at their responses, their costumes, and other photos from the fun- and fright-filled soiree at the Los Angeles Theatre.

>>>CLICK THROUGH FOR LANCE BASS & MICHAEL TURCHIN

Lance Bass & Michael Turchin

Greatest fear?

Lance: Physically? Spiders would be mine.

Michael: Being in shark-infested waters.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

Lance: That we continue to be misunderstood. We're such a misunderstood group, and it doesn't help that there's so much rhetoric out there about us.

Michael: I think things are just getting so much better. Soon -- but not very soon -- we'll be in a world where we don't have to be in fear, at least in the United States.

>>> NEXT: JOHN HALBACH & KIT WILLIAMSON

John Halbach & Kit Williamson (Eastsiders)

Greatest fear?

Kit: Jesus Christ. He's terrifying. He's going to come back from the dead. He's going to eat your brains. It's going to be horrible. [Laughs] But if I'm being serious? I'd say my greatest fear is mediocrity.

John: Target going out of business. I couldn't live without Target.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

Kit: Losing the freedom to be yourself amidst a PR campaign. There's a lot of pressure to conform to bullshit standards that don't necessarily reflect who you are as an individual. And I left Mississippi so I could live my life as I see fit.

John: That Target goes out of business ... for the gay community.

>>>NEXT: ANDY BELL, SCOTT NEVINS, BLAKE MCIVER, EMERSON COLLINS

Scott Nevins, Blake McIver, Emerson Collins (The People's Couch)

Greatest fear?

Emerson: That there actually is a hell and I'm going there.

Blake: Snakes.

Scott: Ending up alone and dressed as Elaine Stritch on Halloween night.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

Scott: That we don't stay a community -- that we break off and don't keep together.

Blake: That they forget about Elaine Stritch. And Judy Garland.

Emerson: My fear is that as we achieve marriage equality, which is clearly on its way, that we will become passive in all of the other issues that affect the other parts of the LGBT community. Specifically, as gay men, [I fear] that we will forget that bisexuals are erased and the trans community is still struggling for a lot of rights that we regularly take for granted, and that we forget to continue our fundraising efforts and our activism efforts, and that we feel we are "done."

We have to remember to continue to educate ourselves that we can work on more than one thing at one time. It is incumbent on us as gay men, who are the most privileged part of the LGBT community, to remember that if we stop fighting for our rights, we don't stand for anything.

>>>NEXT: WILSON CRUZ

Wilson Cruz (GLAAD, Red Band Society)

Greatest fear?

Not living up to my potential.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

That we get complacent just because we passed marriage across the country. There are a multitude of issues that we have to deal with, even after marriage. We still see bullying in schools. We see an outsized number of suicides of young LGBT people. We are educating our whole culture about transgender issues and [raising awareness about] racism within our own communities.

How do we fight complacency?

Educate yourself ... Make sure that you vote. We're not only powerful financial players in this culture, but we're political voices. We've changed the way that politics has worked. We need to own that part of our history, and vote.

>>> NEXT: STEVE GRAND

Steve Grand

Greatest fear?

My greatest fear is that no one will know this Halloween costume and how genius it is, because just look around ... no one could do this. This is just special ... I am a banana. I just really wanted to show off my body and accentuate all of my features, so I thought this was the best way to do that.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

Being misunderstood, and not really understanding how incredibly diverse of a community that we are.

[In addition] we can be so mean to each other, and I think that really needs to stop. It's so uncalled for, especially on the Internet. We talk about antibullying all the time, and I see some of these gay publications, and they're so mean. We eat our young, and we really need to stop that. That's not OK. We need to support each other -- that doesn't mean we need to blindly love everything we all do, but God, give people a goddamn break ...

Do you want to call out some publications?

They know who they are. Journalism is dead. We want things that are sensational, and we just want destroy everybody ... to watch people crumble down ... I would like to see people who write on the Internet have a little more balls.

>>>NEXT: JAI RODRIGUEZ

Jai Rodriguez (Malibu Country)

Greatest fear?

Bodies of water. I'm frightened of lakes. Like, when you see a couple taking a skinny dip late at night in the lake, and that's romantic? That would be awful for me. That would be my nightmare.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

That we continue to not raise each other up, and we continue to fight amongst ourselves. We have enough people hating us and giving us shade. I think we should support and try and pull each other up when we're down.

>>>NEXT: PAUL KATAMI

Paul Katami (Plaintiff, Hollingsworth v. Perry)

Greatest fear?

Death. The macabre. No consciousness. During Halloween, you see all the crazy ways you can go, and it just freaks me out.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

We're seeing so much movement, so much momentum, that my fear is that apathy is going to slow us down. We can't be apathetic. We've got to keep moving. Even though we're winning marriage, we still have to end discrimination in the workplace and discrimination for our trans family as well.

>>>NEXT: PANDORA BOXX

Pandora Boxx

Greatest fear?

I thought it was clowns. Then I thought it was dilapidated ice cream trucks. But now it is a clown motel near a graveyard that really exists.

So, Bianca Del Rio?

Oh, my God, is she here? She does scare me. She is scarier than all that combined.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

Lesbians. I just don't understand vaginas. So many layers.

>>>NEXT: DEAN GLEYER

Dean Geyer (Glee)

Greatest fear?

Losing one of my family members. I'm super close to my family.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

Airborne Ebola ... [or] some sort of government conspiracy theory.

>>>NEXT: STEPHEN GUARINO

Stephen Guarino (Eastsiders, Logo's The Straight Out Report)

Greatest fear?

That my IMDB Starmeter will plummet. [Laughs] It's so important, your Internet score.

Greatest fear for the LGBT community?

Assimilation. We'll be super boring.

How do we avoid assimilation?

We'll get all our rights, but then we'll still have secret parties, where straight people aren't allowed to come.