History-Making Hallmark Star Fires Back at MAGA Haters

The Gay King of Christmas, Jonathan Bennett, is revealing how his MAGA haters motivate him.

Bennett, 45, first broke through as Aaron Samuels in the 2004 comedy Mean Girls, and has now become a Hallmark icon, racking up a slate of firsts for the channel. His 2020 movie The Christmas House featured Hallmark’s first same-sex kiss, and 2022’s The Holiday Sitter was Hallmark’s first LGBTQ-led holiday movie.

“This time has made me want to double and triple down on the types of love stories I tell, the representation I have in the media,” he told Obsessed: The Podcast. “I will always tell love stories that look like mine, because so many people need to see them. And whatever that costs and whatever that is to do, I will make sure that I do it.”

In addition to Hallmark and his role opposite Lindsay Lohan, 40, in Mean Girls, Bennett has hosted Food Network’s Halloween Wars since 2016. The 16th season premiered Sept. 13.

Bennett also stars in the upcoming Christmas movie Single at the Wedding, which airs Dec. 20 on the Hallmark Channel, and has played Detective Joe Fitzpatrick on the ABC daytime soap opera General Hospital since May.

Bennett came out publicly as gay in 2017 by posting a photograph of himself and his partner Jaymes Vaughan on Instagram. The couple got married in 2022, the same year The Holiday Sitter came out. Two years earlier, while shooting The Christmas House, he said scores of crew members, including the caterers, came to watch his big kiss scene with co-star Brad Harder. He was baffled as to why so many people were watching.

“The director looked at me,” Bennett said. “He goes, ‘You guys are about to kiss. You’re making history. This has never been done before. Everyone wants to witness it.’”

“In that moment, it was like lightning went through my body,” he continued. “I was like, ‘My gosh, this is the reason I was put on this earth. This is my mission.’ All the things that you didn’t know, and you were like, ‘Why is this happening? Why am I doing this? What does all this mean in that moment?’—everything became clear. This is my mission.”

In 2025, his Hallmark movie The Groomsmen, which showed the first gay wedding on the Hallmark Channel, won Outstanding Film at the GLADD Media Awards. Bennett views the award as a testament to the power of queer storytelling, despite the “outside force” of Trumpism “pushing” the idea that queer stories don’t matter.

“This is not just a flash in the pan,” he said. “There’s a dedication to this. And as long as I can eat, and breathe, and talk, I will keep making these movies. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in the world with all the hatred that we’re getting. Yes, it’s a dark time. But the gay community is still there. The gay community didn’t go anywhere.”