# Come out, come out, wherever you are… #
# I’m coming out; I want the world to know… #
In addition to yearly pride celebrations, the first March on Washington for gay civil rights was held on October 10 and 11, 1987. So for a number of years now, October 11 has been designated as National Coming Out Day, and I think that’s a good thing. I wish that every gay person in the world would just come on out. For this reason I am a firm advocate of outing, voluntary or forced, if need be. I believe that there is strength in numbers, and until mainstream society is ultimately bombarded with the overwhelmingly vast number of queers there are, we will never receive the proper respect and recognition that we deserve.
I have a T-shirt that reads, “One percent? Did anyone check the closets?” I have never accepted that conservative belief by some that only one percent of the population is homosexual. Come on, I probably know more than that myself! And how can they ever ascertain a true census when so many closet cases simply refuse to admit it about themselves? So, of course, the percentage is always going to be unrealistically low. But suppose we do consider even one percent of the world’s population? At the end of 2024 the population of the world has reached 8 billion, and one percent of that is 80 million. That’s still a lot of faggots and dykes by anybody’s standards! It is certainly enough to merit some recognition and to lend some attention to our basic human rights. Interest groups of much smaller numbers have demanded social consideration.
I would make a wager that the number of gay people in the world well exceeds that number. If you hear anyone nowadays say that they don’t know any homosexuals, they must be really out of it or just in major denial. How could that be, when we are everywhere? Of course, they know some! They just probably don’t want to know that they do. That’s like saying that every gay person in the world has no family, friends or any social acquaintances whatsoever. You can’t possibly get away from us. And since we are not going away, those who don’t want us around?…well, that’s just tough!
Did you ever stop to think about what the world would be like if there were no gays or if none had ever existed? It certainly would be devoid of many wonderful and beautiful things. I defy anyone to think back through the history of the world, at any specified period of time, and not encounter some significant contribution to our lives, especially to our cultural heritage, that a homosexual person was responsible for. I’m sure that everyone has a favorite author, artist, performer, athlete, teacher, inventor, innovator, some hero or role model, somebody in your life that you greatly admire and respect, that was or is gay, whether you may be aware of it or not. Let me cite some random examples of historical and current homosexual influence on our civilization.
For instance, there was a very popular 18th-century song called “To Anacreon in Heaven,” the tune of which later became our American national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The subject of the song, Anacreon, was a prominent Greek poet, who was gay. Due to the difficult singability of the song, there have been many attempts to convince Congress to seek a new national anthem, but to no avail so far. I’ll bet we could speed up the movement if they knew that the tune’s origin is about some foreign fag who used to diddle little boys!
I even take issue with the lyrical content of the song. It’s a song that glorifies war and aggression. “…through the perilous fight… / …and the rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air…“ Is that what and all this country is about? The song is blatantly racist as well. Consider the line, “…the land of the free…” The poem by Francis Scott Key, a slave owner himself, was written in 1814, when American slavery was in full swing. So, the land at that time was free only for white people, certainly not for any of us. 150 years later, things had not changed that much in certain locales. There is a third stanza, which is never used, thankfully, that alludes to freed slaves, who as British soldiers, were put on the front lines as the first to be sacrificed in battle. Even now I don’t consider the country all that free. Hardly anything is free. We cannot do anything or go anywhere that we want to, not even the whites. Immigration restrictions still abound, for one thing. These facts alone should be sufficient enough to merit a change.
“America the Beautiful” would be my choice for our national anthem. It honors the positive, aesthetic qualities of the land. The song is about the country itself, and it has a lovely, singable melody. “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a flag song. I think that national anthems should be about the specific country, not about some stupid flag! We would even keep it gay, because the words to “America the Beautiful” were written by Katherine Lee Bates, a sapphist!
Tutankhamen’s predecessor, Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten (who ruled from about 1375 to about 1358 B.C.), introduced the concept of internationalism to the ancient world. He also challenged centuries-old traditions and beliefs by introducing monotheism, the idea of a single, omnipotent God, rather than a whole bunch of lesser gods, as had been believed up until then. In doing so, he greatly antagonized the powerful priesthood, but set the groundwork for modern religions. The fact that Akhenaten was gay—he even had a lover (they were the first documented male couple in history)—did not seem to bother his contemporaries. He and his lover were assassinated because of their religious views.
While we are on the subject of religion… Who has had a bigger influence on the world at large than Jesus Christ? In my prior treatise about him, I suggest that he was probably gay. Without going through it all again here, you should read that particular blog (Jesus H. Christ!) for the specific details. But Jesus and his Disciples were not the only alleged homosexuals in the Bible. Just as famous and well-respected was their Old Testament soul brother David, who was a shepherd, warrior, musician, poet, popular king of Israel, and purported author of the famous, oft-recited and sung “23rd Psalm: The Lord Is My Shepherd,” among many others. Even though David was married more than once and had several children, he also had a torrid love affair with King Saul’s beautiful son Jonathan. In 1st Samuel David admits that he loves Jonathan “as he loved his own soul,” and later David tells Jonathan directly, “Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.”
Ruth, too, seemed to have had a special affection towards her mother-in-law, Naomi, which went beyond mere family devotion. “I will never leave you. Wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you lodge, I will lodge with you.” Someone might tell me, “Oh, that’s not what any of that means.“ How do you know? Maybe that’s exactly what it means! Do you have to catch somebody in flagrante delicto before you believe it? Anyhow, I can interpret Biblical passages any way I choose to, just as everyone else tends to do.
What gets me are the clueless, uneducated ignoramuses in this country alone who don’t know any history or much of anything else, but always have so much to say about and criticize things that they know nothing about. I hate it when somebody tells someone, “In the Bible, God says that homosexuality is wrong.” First of all, God didn’t say anything and certainly not that anyway, and “He” didn’t write the Bible. People did! And second, where can I find those words quoted exactly? They often are unable to cite where they are getting this information. It’s probably just something that they have been told, and they are too stupid or too lazy to do their own research in order to validate such hearsay.
They think, too, that gays in the military is some new thing that just cropped up in the last few decades, and something that just should not be, not knowing that there have always been gay soldiers somewhere in the world. For those who just cannot imagine a military unit with faggots in it, as far back as the 4th century B.C. there was the Sacred Band of Thebes, which was composed entirely of 150 pairs of gay lovers who had taken a vow to stand or fall together. They were unbeaten in battle for many years but were eventually defeated in 338 B.C. by Philip II of Macedon, who was the father of Alexander the Great (another queen). You see, there is nothing new in this world. So gay people are not allowed to serve in the military, huh? Then why at the end of World War II, for example, were there over 9,000 homosexuals discharged from the armed forces? And these are just the ones that they found out about. So, all you opinionated blowhards, know some history or at least something about your subject before you go spouting off your mouth about it.
I contend that gay people are everywhere, and not even the nation’s capital, including the White House, is exempt. We have heard about same-sex dalliances on Capitol Hill among Congressmen, Senators and their pages, but certain historians have delved into the personal lives of our U.S. Presidents as well, specifically trying to discover if any of them could possibly have been gay. Well, what do you think they found? Several likely candidates: the bachelor James Buchanan (but I always suspected him anyway), James Garfield, and even Abraham Lincoln!
But the biggest discovery is none other than George Washington! Yes, Virginia, it seems that the Father of Our Country was a queen! Some of the dirt that has been dug up on ol’ George was that his marriage to Martha was just a pretense. You know how that goes. They were friends, she was rich, and he needed a “beard,” okay? Well, she didn’t have any children by him, did she? A beard, incidentally, is a virility symbol—whereby it’s a woman who dates or even marries a gay man to help him socially and/or to prevent suspicion of his being gay. There are many of your “bearded ladies” in Hollywood, for example. One revealing tabloid headline once read, “Tom Cruise Shaves His Beard!” when said actor announced his divorce from Nicole Kidman. Get it?
George “Dubya” (the First) loved men in uniform, and playing soldier was his favorite hobby and pastime. In 1759 he recognized his own gay heritage by purchasing for his collection, busts of six famous generals, all gay: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar (who was purportedly hailed in the streets of Rome with the cries of “Regina! Regina!”), Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Prince Eugene of Savoy and the Duke of Marlborough (ancestor of Winston Churchill, who also was gay, by the way). So here is another indication that “Gays in the Military” is not some new thing.
There is documented evidence that Georgie had a longtime love affair with Alexander Hamilton, who was 24 years his junior. They were best buddies and spent much of their time together. Alex even served as George’s personal secretary and aide-de-camp. (Yeah, I’ll just bet they used to “camp” together!) There exist love letters that they wrote to each other, and they were known to have passionate lovers’ spats in public. I have not seen the Broadway show Hamilton, and I wonder if this affair is at all alluded to. George also had a thing for the Marquis de Lafayette. It sort of gives the notion “Washington slept here” a new perspective, doesn’t it?
Where can you go in this country and not encounter the name or image of Washington somewhere? It is the most popular place name in America—with a state, 27 counties and 34 towns, including the capital, as well as a number of bridges, monuments, statues, schools, public parks and thoroughfares. But have you ever noticed that the family surname of Washington, at least in this country, is used exclusively by black people? Ironically, every Washington (other than Washington Irving) that I have encountered in life, even TV characters, are black. Have you ever met a white person named Washington? Since George never had any children of his own, these subsequent Washingtons must be descendants of the slaves that he owned, who took his name as their own. You did know that our dear George was a major slave owner, didn’t you?
When it was publicly revealed that former Presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg is gay, some had pondered if the country would be ready for a gay President? Well, since he is not the first and only, and even the very first one that they elected was gay, I think that we all should be more than ready by now, don’t you? One dissenter declared that she didn’t want somebody “like that” in the White House. Would she rather have philanderers and womanizers in there instead? And what does his sexuality have to do with the job at hand? Then, too, what if “they” are already in there and have been for some time now? Incidentally, the U.S. Senator from Alabama, William Rufus DeVane King, referred to as the First Lady “Miss Nancy,” was the best friend and purported lover of President James Buchanan.
Don’t think that all of our real First Ladies are off the hook either. There is documented proof that Eleanor Roosevelt, for one, was a sapphist, with a girlfriend and everything! The tabloids ran articles a few years ago exposing Hillary Rodham Clinton and her sapphist lovers! No wonder she was so forgiving of Bill’s extramarital indiscretions. If the stories are true, she was off doing her own thing, too.
Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis’ own father, John Vernou Bouvier III, was openly gay. One of his many lovers was songwriter Cole Porter. Chester Arthur’s grandson, Gavin Arthur, was notoriously gay. Former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s daughter, Mary, is a sapphist. Another famous dyke, whose image actually made it onto an American coin, is feminist, suffragette and abolitionist Susan B. Anthony, who is also one of only three women honored on a statue in the Capitol building’s rotunda.
Anyone who lives in or has visited the southern African country of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia, or is or knows anyone who has been the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship (and that includes our very own former President Bill Clinton, for one) should be aware that namesake British statesman and empire builder Cecil Rhodes [1853-1902] is the homosexual responsible for their assisted education. And the next time you are at the doctor’s or in the hospital, keep in mind that sapphist Florence Nightingale, the founder of trained nursing and advocate of hospital reform, is indirectly responsible for the care that you now receive.
To the homophobic Jews, they may owe their very survival to a faggot. Alan Turing [1912-1954] was a British mathematician who played an instrumental role in the defeat of Adolf Hitler. While working for British Intelligence in 1942, he succeeded in cracking the German secret code that allowed the Allies to gain access to Hitler’s most secret communications, thus subsequently bringing the War to a close. His story is depicted in Breaking the Code (1996) with Derek Jacobi portraying Turing and the more recent The Imitation Game (2014) with Benedict Cumberbatch. Turing also invented the digital computer. Look what a major influence that has made on the entire world of today! By the way, there is also some historical speculation that Hitler himself was gay. You see, some homosexuals are indeed very unhappy people.
Homophobic blacks, too, should appreciate the tremendous influence that gay political activist Bayard Rustin [1910-1987] had on the civil rights movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s. He was an advisor and close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who conceived and organized the historic March on Washington in 1963, which undoubtedly inspired and may be at least partly responsible for many of the freedoms and rights we Americans-of-color now enjoy. At any rate, a record turnout of a quarter million people certainly would qualify as major cultural influence.
How many millions of tourists have made pilgrimages to the Louvre over the years to view the “Mona Lisa” or to the Sistine Chapel to appreciate the paintings on the ceiling, as well as other great works of art as The Last Supper and the famous statue of David? Well, Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519], generally considered to be the greatest of universal geniuses and visionaries, and Michelangelo Buonarroti [1475-1564] both were unabashed homosexuals. Who, but a queen, would spend four years painting one room?
In the 1965 Hollywood film about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy, there is, of course, no mention of his homosexuality. They even gave him a romance with a woman. The producers did not dare to suggest that such an artistic genius could possibly be gay. Heavens forbid! How could we enjoy the film or respect the subject matter knowing that?
At least, they wouldn’t come right out and say it. They did drop an ambiguous hint, though, that I, and I’m sure others in the know, certainly picked up on. Charlton Heston as Michelangelo has gone into hiding at one point in the film, and everybody is looking for him. When the Roman guards checks a local brothel, the madam there assures them, “You can search the whole world and you’ll never find Michelangelo in a place like this! Ha ha, imagine, Michelangelo here!” Of course, she could mean that Michelangelo, being such a pious, moral-minded zealot, would never hire the services of a female prostitute, but we know what she really means, don’t we? (Heh, heh, heh.) Perhaps they should have checked the local bathhouse! Since it is more accepted nowadays, I expect that a new biopic about Michelangelo would, or should anyway, freely explore his true sexuality.
Even the more recent cable series “Leonardo” for some reason avoids to explore the artist’s gay life. He has some close male friends, but it is never suggested that anything sexual is going on between any of them. The producers seem to be more focused with his romantic obsession with the woman who posed for his Mona Lisa portrait. The follow-up, 4-hour PBS documentary, Leonardo da Vinci (2024), however, gives a more in-depth study of his entire life and achievements. This report did acknowledge his homosexuality, but said that at that particular period in history, being gay was no big deal. People didn’t care much what anybody did. Leonardo had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. He was interested in everything, including nature and the human body. He wanted to know how everything worked.
Oh, and the next time you are on an airplane, or jump out of one, keep in mind that Leonardo was probably the first to experiment with aviation. That was 400 years before the Wright Brothers came along. He is also accredited with inventing the parachute, the helicopter, the automobile, the drawbridge, revolving stage, the piano, scissors, the telescope and contact lenses, for the vain, sight-impaired. And your latter-day militaries would appreciate that Leonardo gave them machine guns and armored tanks to play with. Plus, he is said to have served as Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, the secret society that is in charge of guarding the legendary Holy Grail. If that weren’t all, Aristotle, Socrates and Zeno, 4th-century Greek philosophers who influenced universal thought of their day, all were gay!
Incidentally, Michelangelo is not the only gay character that Charlton Heston got to play in the movies. His Judah Ben-Hur (1959) also was secretly gay, but one has to read between the lines to discern that fact. In fact, the whole film is quite gay, if you examine it closely. The back story is that Judah and Messala had a romantic relationship during their youth, and when they are reunited years later, Messala wants to resume the relationship, but Judah flatly rejects him, which is why he becomes his bitter enemy. It is simply a case of a lover scorned. That whole thing about Messala wanting Judah to join his forces against the Jews is just an excuse for them to get back together. Gay author Gore Vidal, who wrote the screenplay, did confide this little inside intrigue to the director William Wyler and even to Stephen Boyd, who plays Messala, but they didn’t let Heston in on what was going on, fearing his reluctance or objection. Gay writers tend to create gay characters. We can’t help ourselves.
Notice that in the scene where the two see each other for the first time and embrace, Boyd has this expression of utter delight on his face. He is so glad to see his boyfriend again. When they both throw their spears at the crossbeams in the room, Messala says to Judah, “Still so close,“ and Judah replies, “In every way,“ to which Messala adds, “I hope so,“ as he lovingly fingers Judah’s arm! A very subtle gesture, but I caught it. Messala even utters this non sequitur: “Is anything so sad as unrequited love?“ Say what? Maybe there were missed opportunities when they were young, but now as an adult, Messala is ready to act on his desires. Then when they toast, they lock their arms to drink. Who does that besides those enamored of one another? Their faces are only inches apart when the scene changes. Shucks! Did we miss the inevitable kiss?
And finally, after Messala is fatally wounded during the chariot race, whom does he summon to his dying bedside but Judah?! Whom would you want to see one last time before you die, someone you hate with a passion or someone that you love? Even before the race, Judah was not at all interested in participating until he learned that Messala would be there. Oh, now he wants to compete!
How about when Judah is sentenced to serve time on the galley ship, and on the way there he collapses from exhaustion and thirst? He is given water by Jesus Christ (his face is never shown), who is stroking Judah’s hair and face and caressing him while he drinks. When Judah looks up at Jesus, he has this look of loving admiration on his face, and he is still looking at his savior as he is being dragged away. Judah attempts to return the favor later when Jesus is in a similar situation.
I even suspect that Judah and his captor on the galley ship have a thing for each other. Of the 200 slaves on the ship, Quintus (Jack Hawkins) singles Judah out to speak to–he even summons Judah to his chambers one night to “talk.” And later, while all his fellow rowers are chained together, Quintus orders only Judah to be unshackled. So when the ship is attacked and Quintus is thrown overboard, Judah dives in after him and saves his life, which prompts Quintus to free Judah and later adopt him as his son and heir. You might say that Quintus is Judah’s “sugar daddy.”
When Judah returns home, he is more concerned about seeing Messala again than renewing a romance with Esther, the woman he left behind. She is in love with him, but he shows little interest in her. They barely embrace after having not seen each other for four years. Yeah, he’s gay. It’s all there, people. You just have to be observant, and having cinematic “gaydar” helps, too.
There are many subtle gay references in old films that go over some people’s heads. Let me cite a few more. Some characters use coded metaphors and innuendo to mask their true intentions. Like Laurence Olivier in Spartacus (1960) during the notorious bathing scene with his slave Tony Curtis. Sir Larry is trying to put the make on pretty-boy Tony and asks him if he considers the preference of “oysters” and/or “snails” to be a morality issue, then admits that at times he himself likes to partake of both. “How about you, dear boy, do you fancy oysters and snails?” Tony then flees so he won’t have to “go there” with the older man, I suppose.
Cowboys Montgomery Clift and John Ireland are comparing their guns in Red River (1948), trying to determine who has the more impressive one! “Let me see your gun. Do you want to see mine?” Then they whip them out (of their holsters) and actually stroke them. Hey, boys, stop that! I think John wins, though. It was rumored that Ireland did indeed have a fully-loaded “gun,” and little Monty Clift, not so much. In a later scene, Ireland is with a group of other ranchers and when asked why he agreed to go on the cattle drive with them, he tells them, “Because [John Wayne] asked me to go, and besides, I have taken a liking to that gun of his.” Oh, have you now! A little less subtle is the scene in which Joanne Dru chides the spatting Monty and Duke Wayne with, “Stop fighting! You two know that you love each other.” Well, she had their number at least, huh?
In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (also 1948) John Dall and Farley Granger have just murdered their friend for kicks and are discussing the experience. It’s obvious, at least to me, that these two are lovers. “How did it feel when we did it? Was it as good for you?” Do you need reassurance, John? Are you that insecure? In Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers, the dykish housekeeper, is showing the new Mrs. DeWinter, played by Joan Fontaine, the room and belongings of her former mistress, whom it’s apparent that she still has a thing for. She has kept this dead woman’s lingerie and is shown lovingly caressing her panties and even sniffing the crotch!
Similarly, in The Uninvited (1944) the character of Cornelia Otis Skinner apparently had a sapphic relationship with a woman who is now a house-haunting ghost. “Miss Holloway” refers to “Mary” as her “darling” and relates the plans they had as a live-together couple before the woman died. She also talks often to the large portrait of her dead girlfriend that hangs on the wall of her office. But nobody alludes to their sapphism. “Oh, they were just good friends.” Sure, they were. Friends with benefits!
In Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951), Robert Walker’s character, Bruno Anthony, is a romantically-unattached mama’s-boy who cruises and then comes on to tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger again, who is probably straight this time) on the train. Bruno tells Guy that he likes him a lot and wants to be “friends” with him, to the point that if they commit murder for each other, he hopes that it will cause them to have a close, ongoing relationship. He is obsessed with Guy, turning up wherever he happens to be at the time. Maybe the reason that Bruno’s father hates him is because he knows his only son is a fag. It was Walker himself who chose to play the character as gay.
In North by Northwest (1959) it was a note in the script that alerted Martin Landau that his character has a thing for James Mason. Although Hitchcock never discussed these gay aspects with his actors, he certainly was aware of them. He was interested in perverse sexuality of any kind and used it for dramatic tension. His Norman Bates in Psycho (1960) is a sexually-confused, misogynistic, homicidal cross dresser!
In Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Sal Mineo’s character has an obvious crush on costar James Dean. How about when Sal opens his school locker and instead of a picture of Betty Grable or Rita Hayworth, there is hanging a publicity headshot photo of Alan Ladd! Well, now! The signs are there, you just have to be astute enough to spot them. Check out Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet (book and/or 1995 film-documentary) for these and other instances of gay moviedom.
Not so subtle, and unenlightened children may not be aware, but Bert Lahr’s Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz (1939) is a blatant flamer! Of course, the kids think he’s funny, and it’s true that during that period, nelly characters were used basically as comic relief. Lahr’s mannerisms and even some of his lines are so gay. He tells us right off the bat in his introductory song, # Life is sad, believe me, Missy, when you’re born to be a sissy, without the vim and verve… # Well, now! Then, # I’m afraid there’s no denyin’, I’m just a dandy lion… # as he breaks wrist. So again, he admits it. Later he sings, # If I were King of the forest, not queen (oh, really?!), not duke, not prince / My regal robes of the forest would be satin (satin robes, huh?), not cotton, not chintz. # Chintz?! How many straight men (or others, for that matter) even know what chintz is? And the Lion would have to know what it is in order not to want it, wouldn’t he? Anyway, I would think that chintz would be right up his alley! # As I click my heels… # Miss Thing, why are you wearing heels?! When Dorothy first meets the Scarecrow and is asking him which road to take, he tells her, “Well, some go this way, and some go that way. Of course, some people go both ways.” They certainly do, don’t they? The film is just loaded with camp!
Another hilarious comedy film fraught with gay references and sensibilities is Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959). Jack Lemmon is the quintessential drag queen, and Joe E. Brown is Jack’s relentless pursuer. “Osgood,” a millionaire bachelor “mama’s boy,” has to know that “Daphne” is really a man, but he apparently doesn’t care. Daphne even tries to tell him when Osgood says to him, “You must be quite a girl.” and Jack retorts, “Wanna bet?” Osgood later proposes marriage to Daphne–and he accepts!–and wants to take him home to meet his mother. Even when Lemmon finally admits to Brown that he is, in fact, a man, it does not faze him one bit.
Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 (1953) is set in a WWII prisoners-of-war camp. The all-male cast is confined for many months together without any female interaction whatsoever. Now, you know that those young, virile guys must be fucking each other! Why wouldn’t they be? My favorite scene in the film is when the men throw a party for themselves and all are shown slow dancing cheek-to-cheek with each other! I mean, how gay is that?! They all love singing a song which has the lyric, # And we’ll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home. # Of all the songs they could have picked, why did Wilder choose that particular one for them to sing over and over again? There are no accidents. The same can be said for Cool Hand Luke (1967). There are these strapping young guys in an isolated, southern prison camp, who walk around half-naked most of time with no female access. Of course, they are having rampant sex with each other? What’s stopping them?
In The Happiest Millionaire (1967), the last film that Walt Disney had anything to do with before he died, there is a scene that I assess with a peculiar perspective. The movie takes place in Philadelphia, “the City of Brotherly Love.” John Davidson and Tommy Steele visit a local Irish pub which is populated entirely by men! In most movie bar scenes there are always women on the premises, as they like to drink, too, and be picked up by guys on the make. Or they would employ a bar maid serving drinks and/or a female bartender. So is this a gay bar, then, perhaps? Just because the patrons don’t appear to be gay, I am not convinced that they aren’t. They do attempt to prove their manliness by staging an obligatory bar brawl, which is one way that some men show their affection for each other. I’m just saying.
Several screen adaptations of Tennessee Williams plays display not-so-subtle instances of gay subtext. The most obvious is in his Suddenly Last Summer (1959), in which the only-referred-to character of Sebastian Venable apparently has gotten eaten alive by a mob of starving, indigent, Spanish youths. Sebastian’s cousin, Catharine, who relates the story to her family and doctor, reveals that he used her to procure male prostitutes for him, and which is why his doting mother wants to lobotomize her niece to prevent her from outing her son.
In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) Brick (Paul Newman) and Maggie (Elizabeth Taylor) are a sexless, therefore childless, married couple. Brick is grieving from the suicide death of his “special friend,” Skipper, who we learn was his secret lover. It is implicated that Brick broke off the relationship when he married Maggie and has become a hopeless drunk out of guilt, as he believes that Skipper killed himself because of it. Maggie is sexually frustrated, because Brick doesn’t pay her any attention. Now, come on! He doesn’t desire Elizabeth Taylor? He must be gay! I would have fucked Liz Taylor!
In A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) we learn from Blanche Dubois that she was once married to a younger-than-herself man who, when she discovered that he was gay and did not take the news very well, killed himself. Do you detect a pattern here? In all of these cited plays, there is a reference to a dead faggot who either killed himself or was horribly murdered. That’s only three examples. As I don’t know all of Williams’ plays, there may be others with similar characters. The movie versions all gloss over these gay references, however. They never say the word. We have to discern it from the context of the dialogue.
Check out this verse from Leiber and Stoller’s song, “Jailhouse Rock,” which Elvis Presley sang in the 1957 film of the same name. # No. 47 said to No. 3, / “You’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see. / I sure would be delighted with your company. / Come on and do the Jailhouse Rock with me.” # Say what?! This must be an all-male prison, so to whom is he referring if not another man? Plus, the term “rock” (and “roll,” too) when used in popular music of the ’50s and ’60s have long been euphemisms for the sex act. # Let’s rock!…Everybody in the whole cell block were “dancing” to the Jailhouse Rock. # Oh, were they, now? That sounds like major orgy time to me!
There is apparently a Gay Revolution occurring in the entertainment industry, as popular magazines like Entertainment Weekly, People and Time have reported of late. Two decades before the last one was even hailed as “The Gay ’90s,” as gay pop culture definitely infiltrated the mainstream. It seems that practically every new TV series since the 1996 Fall Season (at least the ones I’ve seen) features a gay character or includes some gay reference at some point in the show. At first they appeared to serve only as a token, because they were usually single. If gays have the reputation of being so promiscuous, why were they seldom shown having sex or with a lover or other gay people? We certainly get enough of men and women rolling around in bed together all the time. I guess the producers thought that one faggot in a situation was ideally quite enough, and we certainly didn’t want to see them making love!
Thankfully, there have been huge changes in that department. Now being gay seems to be no big deal. And they are all open and up front about it, too. They can volunteer the information that they are gay without any negative response from the other characters. The character, Steven Carrington on the original “Dynasty,” created a family scandal when he finally decided that he was gay and ended up with a live-in male lover. On the new reboot of the series, Steven‘s being gay is nothing special. He is just another character who just happens to be gay.
The original “Roseanne” featured multiple gay characters on a regular basis, including a gay wedding. The short-lived “Courthouse” and “100 Centre Street” both had a sapphist relationship, where one of the women in each series was a judge! “The Tracey Ullmann Show,” whose regular character, Francesca, is a young woman who was raised by her gay father and his male lover. “It’s All Relative” and “Marry Me” also stars two married gay men with an engaged daughter.
One of the main characters in the hit series “Glee“ is a high school girl with two gay fathers. “Picket Fences” featured a gay couple on more than one occasion, and “Northern Exposure,” whose featured gay male couple also had a wedding in one of the episodes. The writers went so far as to name the town where the series is set (Cicely, Alaska) after a beloved sapphist who once lived there with her female lover. “Ellen” featured a married, gay male couple, and the sitcom’s star, Ellen DeGeneres herself created much controversy when her character came out on her show as well as for real! I think that it was a daring move, although it was no great surprise to me, as I always thought that she was a sapphist anyway. Way to go, Ellen!
Another series, “Felicity,” featured more than one gay character, including one season finale gay wedding. “Friends” also featured a sapphist wedding, which was officiated by homophobic former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s sapphist sister Candace! “Desperate Housewives” and “Modern Family” both feature married gay couples as major characters.
Also, we are learning that one does not have to be grown to realize their own gay identity. “The Secret Life of an American Teenager“ and “Ugly Betty“ both feature out and proud high school teenagers. Tween Justin on “Ugly Betty” was the youngest gay character on TV until the series “Back in the Game” came along, where there was a kid character younger than Justin. This boy must have been 10-years-old, and from his demeanor and interests, it’s pretty obvious that the boy is a budding faggot. The sitcoms “Champions” and “The Connors” feature out and proud gay tweens. “The Middle” has a gay teen, too, but the running joke on there was that he and his girl friend had not figured out that he’s queer until the final season of the series.
“Dawson’s Creek,” “Nashville” and “Will and Grace” have featured primetime kisses between two men. “Dante’s Cove,” “Queer As Folk,” “The L Word” and Logo’s (our very own gay network) “Bad Girls,” “Banana,” “Cucumber” and “Noah’s Arc” all feature gay main characters and explicit (although simulated) on-screen sex on a regular basis.
Let’s have a sitcom (other than “Noah’s Arc”) on a major network, like “Friends,” where all the leading characters are gay. Gay people are funny, too. There would be much camping and cruising and even dating! Since both “Sisters” and “Girlfriends” are already taken, I thought of another punny title and premise. How about calling it “Friends of Dorothy”? “Dorothy” could be the resident fag hag of the group. Get it? Now watch somebody steal my idea. We queens have even jumped on the reality-TV bandwagon with the cable shows “Boy Meets Boy,” “Gay Weddings,” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and PBS ran a monthly, gay news magazine series called “In the Life,” on which I appeared several times with The Flirtations.
When someone is developing a TV series with a family setting, they have to decide how many children there are and which gender they shall be. I have noticed that in the case of two gay men with a child (“Tracey Ullmann,“ “It’s All Relative,” “Modern Family,” “Glee” and “Marry Me,” for examples), it’s always been a girl. As there are no accidents, what I think is the reason for that has to do with what ignorant, uninformed Americans think about gay men. When it comes to TV-watching sensibilities, the producers tend to want to appeal to the lowest denominator of viewers, apparently. With a girl there is not likely any impropriety going on, since they wouldn’t have any sexual interest in a female, and girls tend to relate more to their fathers, which is fine. A boy, on the other hand, would be subject to the two men’s constant molestation (you know that we all lust after little boys), and without a female, mother figure in the home and with the dads’ influence, the boy will probably grow up to be gay like them. Of course, we know that that’s all bullshit, but that’s how they think we all think.
But then gay producer-writer Ryan Murphy defied convention a few years ago to be the first and only one so far to make the child of the main characters of “The New Normal,” two married gay men, and provided by a surrogate, to be a boy. But then the show was promptly cancelled, so we never got to see how that played out. In the case of “Two and a Half Men,” their casting a boy instead of a girl is okay, because the two male parents are not gay, therefore no purported sexual threat to the child. And we all know that straight men never molest children, right?
A “character du jour” that has cropped up on TV nowadays is the transsexual. As long as forty years ago much of mainstream America were probably unaware that these people even existed, let alone to be featured as prominent characters on their favorite TV shows. Since Olympia Dukakis starred as transgendered Anna Madrigal in “Tales of the City” in 1993 (and its sequels), other trannies have turned up on “All My Children,” “Ally McBeal,” “Becoming Us,” “Big Shots,” “The Conners,” “Dirty Sexy Money,” “Family Law,” “The Fosters,” “Nip/Tuck,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “Pose,” “Transparent” and “Ugly Betty,” to name some. Theatrical films, too, have been featuring transgendered characters now more than ever before. Although real women are usually cast to play these characters (at least the man-to-woman variety), there are a few instances where they are played by real transgendered actors, like Candace Cayne and Laverne Cox. Even the reality show, “Big Brother,” included its first transgendered houseguest/contestant one season. She didn’t keep it a secret either, but was open and forthcoming about it.
The daytime serial “Passions” came up with an absurd storyline featuring a vengeful, blackmailing, incestuous, split-personality, intersexual serial killer! “Valerie/Vincent” also knowingly had sex with his/her own father, became pregnant and had a baby by him! Can they stop? (“She’s my sister and my daughter!”) Slap that bitch…again. “They” deserve it.
Mike Brady, the patriarch of the ever-popular, syndicated sitcom “The Brady Bunch,” was played by Robert Reed, who was gay. And we mustn’t forget the Bradys’ housekeeper, Alice, played by Ann B. Davis, Nancy Kulp from “The Beverly Hillbillies” and Sheila James Kuehl from “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.” Sherman Hemsley of “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons” was gay, as well as Damon Evans who played his son, Lionel. Dick Sargent of “Bewitched” was gay and even came out publicly a few years before he died. Richard Chamberlain, of “Dr. Kildare,” Shogun and The Thorn Birds fame, finally came out publicly himself a few years ago. The late Raymond Burr, who is associated with portraying, perhaps, the most famous defense lawyer of all time, Perry Mason, was also gay, as well as Grandpa Will Geer of “The Waltons.” Incidentally, Geer was at one time the lover of Harry Hay, political activist and founder of the Mattachine Society, the first national organization for gay men.
Two of the most popular, long-running TV game shows, “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” (since 1964 and 1975 respectively), were created by multi-millionaire mogul and homosexual Merv Griffin. The very popular “Desperate Housewives” and “Devious Maids“ were created by gay writer Marc Cherry, “Six Feet Under” by Alan Ball, and “American Horror Story,” “Glee,” “Grotesquerie,” “911,” “Nip/Tuck,” “Pose” and “Scream Queens” by the aforementioned Ryan Murphy. You Trekkies will be pleased to know that the “Star Trek” series have some gay actors among their ranks, including René Auberjonois, LeVar Burton, Jonathan Frakes, Patrick Stewart, George Takei, and even William Shatner!
(# Who’s the leader of the Club that’s made for you and me?…D-I-S-… # “Estimate the number of your gay employees…” # N-E-Y… # “Why? Because it’s time to out you!” # W-A-L-T! #)
The Walt Disney Studio and its film company affiliates of today have a very high percentage of gay employees. All those best-selling cartoons from The Little Mermaid (1989, and even before) up through to The Princess and the Frog and beyond have a number of gay people connected with them—from animators and writers to the directors and composers. And there is a rumor that even ol’ Walt himself was a closeted gay man, and a chicken queen, to boot! It was revealed in a question on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” one day that just before he died, Walt uttered Kurt Russell’s name! He did star the youth in several of his films. Might he have had a secret, unrequited (or not) crush on the boy?
Walt’s being gay is perhaps why he didn’t hire known homosexuals to work for him while he was alive. He probably was afraid that they might out him and blow his cover. Walt even fired Tommy Kirk, one of his biggest juvenile stars, when the young man’s homosexuality became publicly apparent. But he later hired him back when a couple of his recent movies made the studio so much money, and Walt needed Tommy for a sequel. He must have had a conniption in the afterlife, or maybe he was delighted, when he first learned that Walt Disney World celebrates an annual Gay Day at his park. So now I have outed him as being a closet queen and a racist! (See my other blog about him.)
Who is not an all-time fan of Bugs Bunny? What’s up, Doc? Can we talk? Now, I ask you, is that a queen, or what?! Well, check Miss Thing out! He is frequently “in drag,” in practically every cartoon. He has had a love scene with most of his male costars. In his feature film, Space Jam (1996), Bugs gives basketball star Michael Jordan a big smackeroo kiss right on the mouth, and he’s not even in drag this time! She’s such a camp! The Harry Potter books have become the most successful and most popular novel series of all time. Author J.K. Rowling revealed to the world in the last book that Dumbledore, the beloved headmaster of Harry’s school for wizards, Hogwarts, is gay!
What about Statler and Waldorf, those two old heckling balcony queens from “The Muppet Show”? I love them. And aren’t Bert and Ernie from “Sesame Street” a darling couple! Fans of “The Simpsons” will have heard Waylon Smithers declare his undying love to his employer and mentor, the evil Mr. Burns, on more than one occasion, and Akbar and Jeff (of Life in Hell) are quite open about their lover relationship, as are Logo’s Rick and Steve. Some recent commercial ads have suggested that Popeye and Bluto are now a romantic couple, much to the perplexity of poor rejected Olive Oyl. And who hasn’t figured out that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are lifetime lovers. How do I know? Well, elementary, my dear Reader. Batman and Robin, too, must be porking each other, although Bruce Wayne tries to pass off Robin as his “ward.” Yeah, right. It is also suspected that Xena the Warrior Princess and her “protégée,” Gabrielle, are more to each other than they let on.
In the real world, what about your Butch Cassidy and your Sundance Kid? I suppose that practically everyone presumes that live-together illusionists Siegfried and Roy were lovers. I never heard them deny it. Actor Sylvester Stallone is always dropping little hints in public as to his being gay, but people seem to think that he’s only joking. They think that someone that macho just couldn’t be gay. I am convinced that Stallone and John Travolta had a thing going during the filming of Staying Alive (1983), if not before and maybe even since. There is a scene in the film which shows Travolta walking down a crowded street, being heavily cruised by a man who is none other than Sly himself, in a Hitchcockian cameo appearance! Sly smiles at John through the crowd and makes this really nelly gesture at him. I think that’s pretty blatant. It’s Sly’s film—he wrote and directed it—and if he didn’t want that scene in there, it wouldn’t be. Or he could have had anybody else play that part. So I think he must be trying to tell us something. I have even heard him make self-incriminating comments about himself during interviews. Maybe he’s counting on his fans not to take him seriously. More recently, John himself was publicly outed because of his dalliances with loose-lipped personal masseurs. George Clooney does the same thing. He regularly admits his strong attraction to fellow actor Brad Pitt. We can only speculate if he has physically acted upon his desire.
Though he never wants to admit that he is, in fact, gay (or at least bisexual), I have it on pretty good authority that Tom Cruise was a regular fuck buddy with producer David Geffen, among others. From that earlier cited news report, there must be others as well who suspect as much. I’ve been told that Italian film directors Luchino Visconti and Franco Zefferelli were lovers for many years. I also heard some dirt on the aforementioned Ann “The Man” B. Davis and Nan “The Man” Kulp. Their respective TV shows were filmed in nearby studios, and Barry Williams of “The Brady Bunch” reported to someone that on many occasions Nancy would pick up her friend Ann after work on her motorcycle, and they’d go riding off into the sunset together. Dykes-on-Bikes, Hollywood-Style!
An outraged Frank Sinatra purportedly caught his then-wife Ava Gardner making it with Lana Turner during an intimate slumber party. Heartthrobs Cary Grant and Randolph Scott shared a Hollywood beach house for 12 years. As with Rock Hudson, studio heads pressured Grant to get married to a woman. Scott accompanied him and his first wife of five, actress Virginia Cherrill, on their London honeymoon. The marriage lasted less than a year, and Cary was back at the beach house with Randy.
I recently learned from an elderly actor acquaintance of mine, who knew him personally, that Spencer Tracy was gay! Although they were good friends, if only platonic, Katharine Hepburn was merely his beard for all of those years. He left his wife but he never divorced her, something about their being Catholic and all. Tracy’s sexual interest was for young men and boys. I expect that working on Boys Town (1938) must have been a heavenly experience for him, and he was awarded an Oscar for it besides! Maybe he was Kate’s beard as well. I always perceived sapphist vibes from her. Her whole demeanor and dress just screamed “stomping bulldyke.”
Look at how many men and women all over the world still love and worship Elvis Presley. I learned that he, too, led a closeted gay life. He had been linked with fellow actors Nick Adams and even James Dean, among others. Other famous Hollywood same-sex couples, however unlikely, were Tab Hunter with Anthony Perkins, Danny Kaye with Sir Laurence Olivier, Julie Andrews with Carol Burnett, Joan Crawford with Barbara Stanwyck, Marilyn Monroe with both Joan Crawford and Elizabeth Taylor, Claudette Colbert with Marlene Dietrich, Penny Marshall with Lori Petty, Ethel Merman with Jacqueline Susann, Agnes Moorehead with Debbie Reynolds, and Tallulah Bankhead with Hattie McDaniel! Go ‘head!
Look at how our culture has been influenced by William Shakespeare, debatably the greatest, but at least the most-performed, most-adapted and most-quoted playwright that ever lived, even though the authenticity of his authorship has been put to question and challenged as of late. Yep, another queen! And of course, the works of gay playwrights Edward Albee, Noel Coward, Mart Crowley, Jean Genet, Lorraine Hansbury, Lillian Hellman, William Inge, George Kelly (Princess Grace’s uncle), James Kirkwood, Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner, Federico Garcia Lorca, Christopher Marlowe, Terence McNally, Moliere, Joe Orton, Robert Patrick, Terence Rattigan, Sophocles, August Strindberg, Oscar Wilde, Emlyn Williams, Tennessee Williams and Doric Wilson have been performed all over the world.
How many children all over the world have read, or were read to, the “fairy” tales of Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen? Chicken queen, by his own admission! Children’s authors James M. Barrie and Lewis Carroll had similar reputations. In addition, the works of gay authors like, Horatio Alger, James Baldwin, Brendan Behan, Rosa Bonheur, William S. Burroughs, Samuel Butler, “Truewoman” Capote, Willa “Catheter,” Jean Cocteau, Patrick Dennis, Daphne DuMaurier, Dominick Dunne, E.M. Forster, André Gide, Bret Harte, Christopher Isherwood, Henry James, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, T.E. Lawrence, Somerset Maugham, Armistead Maupin, Carson McCullers, Herman Melville, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sir Harold Nicholson, Edgar Allan Poe, Marcel Proust, Harold Robbins, Frederick Rolfe, Saki, Vita Sackville-West, Madame de Stael, Gertrude Stein, Robert Louis Stevenson, Leo Tolstoy, Alice Walker, Evelyn Waugh, T.H. White, Thornton Wilder, Virginia Woolf (ooh, I am scared of her!) and others, have made it to the movie screens for millions to see.
Widely-read gay poets include, W.H. Auden, Joe Brainard, Rupert Brooke, Lord Byron, Colette, Hart Crane, Countee Cullen, Dante, Emily Dickinson, Lord Alfred Douglas, Robert Duncan, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Allen Ginsberg, Friedrich Hölderlin, Gerald Manley Hopkins, A.E. Housman, Langston Hughes, Chester Kallman, Edward Lear, Audre Lorde, Amy Lowell, Rod McKuen, James Merrill, John Milton, Alexander Pope, James Whitcomb Riley, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine (lovers), Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sappho, May Sarton, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Moray Stuart-Young, Algernon Swinburne, Torquato Tasso, Sara Teasdale, Virgil and Walt Whitman.
Is there anyone alive over the age of five who does not know who Frankenstein is or has not seen a film based on the character or his monstrous creation? Well, here’s one for you. Not only was James Whale, the director of the 1931 horror classic which introduced them to the movie-going public, gay, but so was Mary Wollstonecraft, the woman who produced Mary Shelley, the author of the original novel!
Being a musician and composer myself, I am always interested in who among my fellow artists are gay. The reported gayness of some of the following (mostly) dead classical composers and popular songwriters is pretty much common knowledge, but there are those whom you may not have heard about but of whom there is some evidence, or at least some speculative suspicion. They are: Thomas Arne, Samuel Barber, Ludwig van Beethoven, Vincenzo Bellini, Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Johannes Brahms, Benjamin Britten, Frederic Chopin, Aaron Copland, John Corigliano, Henry Cowell, Carl Czerny, Claude Debussy, Frederick Delius, Manuel de Falla, Duke Ellington, Stephen Foster, George Gershwin, Percy Grainger and Edvard Grieg (who were lovers), Charles T. Griffes, Calvin Hampton, George Frederick Handel, Roy Harris, Lorenz Hart, Hans Werner Henze, Jerry Herman, David Hurd, Jean Baptiste Lully, Gustav Mahler, Alan Menken, Modest Mussorgsky, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, Ned Rorem, Camille Saint-Saens, Erik Satie, Franz Schubert, Marc Shaiman, Stephen Sondheim, Igor Stravinsky, Billy Strayhorn, Sir Arthur Sullivan, Karol Szymanowski, Thomas Tallis, Peter Tchaikovsky, Virgil Thomson, Sir Michael Tippett and Richard Wagner.
Yes, Beethoven! How about that? I learned that there is no evidence that he was ever in a relationship with a woman. But we do know about his affection for his young nephew, Karl. So don’t believe that “Immortal Beloved” bullshit in the 1994 film. In real life at least, the title don’t refer to no woman! Handel, too, had no female attachments his entire life. Were they asexual celibates or closet queens? You decide.
(# I like a Gershwin tune. How about you? #)
Who does not have a favorite piece of music or has not heard something written by at least one of the aforementioned composers? The Catholics, for example, could not have avoided Schubert’s “Ave Maria” all their lives. There are very few wedding ceremonies occurring anywhere, whether they be actual or cinematic, that don’t include Wagner’s “Bridal March.” And who can get through an entire year without hearing Handel’s Messiah, something from a Jerry Herman or Sondheim musical or even a Gershwin or Cole Porter tune?
Princess Grace of Monaco’s favorite piece of music was said to be Barber’s Adagio for Strings,” which was played at her televised funeral. It was reported that the amount of people who witnessed Princess Diana’s funeral in September 1997, at which her close gay friend Elton John performed, at the royal family’s request, numbered in the billions! Look at what influence to popular music The Beatles has had on the world. Their phenomenal success has to be credited in part to their gay manager, Brian Epstein. I even have some dirt on The Beatles themselves! And the next time you are at a public event and you have your hand over your heart singing “America the Beautiful” with the rest of the crowd, why don’t you nudge the person next to you and say, “I just love a good ol’ sapphist sing-along, don’t you?”
Speaking of closet queens, there were four politically-influential men whom the Gay Movement doesn’t even want to claim. They are Roy Cohn, J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy and Francis Cardinal Spellman. They were “running ho’s,” my slang term for pals, buddies, compadres, friends who hang out together. They loved getting dirt on people and using it against them, and they were so anti-gay, despite the fact that they were big ol’ queens themselves. Can we talk here? Now, you know that I’m not one to gossip, but… J. Edgar Hoover had to have been gay! Look at the evidence. He and his constant companion, Clyde Tolson, both lifetime bachelors (at least neither ever got married to women), had a very close “relationship” for 44 years! And who would you leave your half-million dollar estate to when you die, if not your spouse or lover?
How dare that Senator Joe McCarthy go about ruining all those innocent people’s lives and careers and besmirching their reputations by intimating that they were Communists and/or homosexuals, when he and his partner-in-crime Roy Cohn were probably getting it on with each other themselves! Why should anybody’s political affiliation be their personal concern anyway? Might there be a connection that McCarthy died in 1957 of “acute hepatitis, cause unknown” and Cohn of AIDS in 1986, both which are usually sex-related conditions?
And what about “Sister Mary” Francis Spellman? A 1985 biography asserted that the Cardinal was a practicing homosexual and his sexual conduct was the source of much embarrassment to his fellow clergy. But he always came to the aid of his pals Hoover and McCarthy whenever they were under attack. La cage aux folles. You know, birds of a feather flock together. He publicly supported the Vietnam “War,” and anyone who opposed it was labeled a “commie.” It is people like them who need to be outed. For a shocking disclosure of some gay Popes, check out my blog, A Critique of Catholicism.
What follows is an additional list of gay, sapphist and bisexual actors and other show biz folk, past and present, not mentioned previously, of whom there is some pre-ordained, personal knowledge or merely rumor of their queerdom. I don’t apologize for outing anyone, because somebody apparently beat me to it. You, however, may not be aware of some of these. They are: Clay Aiken, Chad Allen, Peter Allen, Mitchell Anderson, Harry Andrews, Jillian Armenante, Alexis Arquette, Dorothy Arzner, William Atherton, Mark Baker, Paris Barclay, Javier Bardem, John Barrowman, Roger Bart, Lance Bass, Alan Bates, Byron Batt, Meredith Baxter. Amanda Bearse, Michael Beck, Maria Bello, Polly Bergen, Sandra Bernhard, Nate Berkus, Jorge Bolet, Matt Bomer, Chaz Bono, Christian Borle, David Dean Bottrell, David Bowie, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman, Wayne Brady, Marlon Brando, Kenneth Branagh, Da Brat, Patrick Breen, Patrick Bristow, Bill Brochtrup, Jim J Bullock, Victor Buono, Richard Burton, Charles Busch, Dan Butler, Spring Byington, Mario Cantone, Capucine, Jerrod Carmichael, Pat Carroll, Gabrielle Carteris, Sam Champion, Tracy Chapman, RuPaul Charles, Margaret Cho, Robert Christian, Montgomery Clift, Kate Clinton, James Coco, Chris Coffer, Frederick Combs, Sean Combs, Anderson Cooper, Gary Cooper, Laverne Cox, Quentin Crisp, Darren Criss, Richard Cromwell, Wilson Cruz, George Cukor, Alan Cumming, Dan Dailey, Matt Dallas, James Daly, Lee Daniels, Jaye Davidson, Brad Davis, Adriana DeBose, Robin DeJesus, Lea Delaria, Dom DeLuise, Sandy Dennis, Portia DeRossi, André DeShields, Billy DeWolfe, Sergei Diaghilev, Guillermo Diaz, Divine, Jason Dottley, Val Dufour, Blake Edwards, Billy Eichner, John “Lypsinka” Epperson, Melissa Etheridge, Rupert Everett, David Faustino, Fortune Feimster, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Harvey Fierstein, Errol Flynn, Jodie Foster, Virgil Fox, Peter Frechette, Jonathan Freeman, Leonard Frey, Robert Gant, Victor Garber, Greta Garbo, Willie Garson, Anthony Geary, Kirk Geiger, Boy George, Richard Gere, Malcolm Gets, Frank Gifford, Allan Glaser, Ron Glass, John Glover, Marga Gomez, Farley Granger, Al Green, Michael Greer, Tyler Gregory, Tim Gunn, William Haines, Todrick Hall, Harry Hamlin, Herbie Hancock, Neil Patrick Harris, Randy Harrison, Laurence Harvey, Gary Hayes, Charlton Heston, Edward Hibbert, Maurice Hines, Geoffrey Holder, Earl Holliman, Vladimir Horowitz, Edward Everett Horton, Rock Hudson, Barry Humphries, Pat Humphries, Linda H(r)unt, Janis Ian, Mark Indelicato, Cheyenne Jackson, Michael Jackson, Derek Jacobi, Mick Jagger, Michael Jeter, Geri Jewell, Van Johnson, Cherry Jones, Janis Joplin, Keith Jordan, Leslie Jordan, Kurt Kaszner, Phillip P. Keene, Paula Kelly, Gus Kenworthy, Larry Kert, Joel Kim, T.R. Knight, Carson Kressley, Nathan Lane, k.d. lang, Darrell Larson, Queen Latifah, Robert LaTourneaux, Rex Lee, Jack Lemmon, John Lennon, James Levine, Liberace, Greg Louganis, Charles Ludlam, Jane Lynch, Paul Lynde, Jackie “Moms” Mabley, James Macarthur, Madonna, George Maharis, John Mahoney, Barry Manilow, Alec Mapa, Ricky Martin, Steve Martin, Heather Matarazzo, Johnny Mathis, Kerwin Matthews, Ross Matthews, Kevin McCarthy, Roddy McDowall, Kelly McGillis, Sir Ian “Sirina” McKellan, Kristy McNichol, Steve McQueen (the actor), Lauritz Melchoir, George Michael, Wentworth Miller, Sal Mineo, Elvis Mitchell, John Cameron Mitchell, Dimitri Mitropoulos, Robert Moore, Jim Nabors, George Nader, Neicy Nash-Betts, Kenneth Nelson, Paul Newman, Olivia Newton-John, Vaslav Nijinsky, Cynthia Nixon, Graham Norton, Ramon Novarro, Rudolf Nureyev, Laura Nyro, Rosie O’Donnell, Tatum O’Neal, Ken Page, Peter Paige, Franklin Pangborn, Jim Parsons, Dolly Parton, Sarah Paulson, Charles Perez, Brock Peters, Walter Pidgeon, Charles Pierce, David Hyde Pierce, Jada Pinkett, Danny Pintauro, Jon Polito, Albert Popwell, Billy Porter, Tyrone Power, Keith Prentice, Zachary Quinto, Ma Rainey, Andrew Rannells, Raven-Symone, Sir Michael Redgrave, Rex Reed, Christopher Reeve, Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Reubens, Lionel Richie, Frank Ripploh, Robin Roberts, Jai Rodriguez, Howard Rollins Jr., Cesar Romero, George Rose, Richard Roundtree, Adamo Ruggiero, Nico Santos, Thomas Schippers, John Schlesinger, Maria Schneider, Christopher Seiber, Tom Selleck, Reid Shelton, Don Shirley, Nina Simone, Christian Siriano, Jojo Siwa, Bessie Smith, Jaden Smith, Will Smith, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Spinella, Ringo Starr, Darryl Stephens, Raymond St. Jacques, Wanda Sykes, Holland Taylor, Sister Rosetta Tharp, Roy Thinnes, Michael Tilson Thomas, Scott Thompson, Lily Tomlin, Yanic Truesdale, Thomas Tryon, Michael Urie, Rudolf Valentino, Gus Van Sant, Conrad Veidt, Tom Villard, Robert Wagner, Lena Waithe, Fred Ward, William Warfield, Isaiah Washington, Ethel Waters, John Waters, Tuc Watkins, Clifton Webb, Alan Weeks, Alexis Weissenberg, Suzanne Westenhoefer, Danny Williams, Karen Williams, Paul Winfield, B.D. Wong, Pedro Zamora, and of course, all of the contestants who have appeared on every season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” You may be surprised by some the names on the list?
You must be aware by now that there seems to be a strong connection between homosexual identity and artistic temperament. I don’t think it’s any accident that so many artists, musicians, performers and writers also happen to be gay. Creative art does require a certain amount of sensitivity and self-discipline, character traits which gay people seem to have more of than your average straights. In the case of your closet gays who lead a double life, that in itself requires great self-discipline and restraint. Concert pianist extraordinaire Vladimir Horowitz once said, “There are three kinds of pianists: Jewish pianists, homosexual pianists, and bad pianists.” Horowitz was in no way a bad one.
So the next time you encounter someone who wishes “Death to all homosexuals!” tell them to make sure that they have gotten positive heterosexual clearance on all their relatives and friends, their father and mother, their husband or wife, their sons and daughters, their employer who pays their salary, some benefactor who paid for their education or supports their livelihood, the law enforcers who protect them and their family, everybody near and dear to them, before they pass such a sentence. I don’t see how anyone could make such an unreasonable and hateful pronouncement anyway. They are saying that it doesn’t matter who you are or what significant contribution you have made to humankind—if you are in any way gay, you must be put to death, no exceptions. There are some dangerously sick people in the world.
Pick any profession or walk-of-life and there will be a gay person, past or present, that is or was involved with it, I guarantee it. The point of all this has been to make you aware of the fact that every aspect of our culture, religious, political and social amenities are touched or influenced by gays. I’ve shown you geographical locations and even whole countries that were created by or named in honor of certain gay people. The homosexual is a vital, very important and necessary commodity of our society, whether you would like to admit it or not.
Since homos are even mentioned in the Bible, as we have discovered, we must have been around for a long time, probably for as long as there have been people in the world, and we will continue to exist until the end of it, I’m sure. You homophobes need to deal with that fact and just get over yourselves. If you are shocked or surprised or dismayed in discovering that certain beloved individuals are, were or could be gay, then that’s good. Maybe that knowledge will change your previous attitude. It just goes to show you that we are so prevalent, it’s very difficult to avoid us all.
I said right from jumpstreet that we are virtually everywhere. Of course, some of the aforementioned outings are pure speculation, rumor and hearsay, but I would love for all of it to be true. I don’t have first-hand proof on everyone mentioned in this treatise, as I didn’t or don’t know them personally, but there are some that I do know about for sure. As Tallulah Bankhead allegedly replied, when once asked if Randolph Scott was really gay—“I’m sure I don’t know, Dahling. He’s never sucked my cock!”
[Related articles: Celebrity Anecdotes and Other Fun Stuff; Conspiracy Theory, Pt. II–The AIDS Epidemic; Gay Pride and Homophobia; Sexism and Gender Issues; Jesus H. Christ; Marry, Marry, Quite Contrary; My Non-Combat Tour-of-Duty; On Being Gay; On the Road With Cliff; Parenting 101; School Days]