Wrestlers Going to the Mat For Gay Rights? Not Exactly.
By Hank Stuever
September 12, 2002

The gay newlyweds of the moment are championship tag-team wrestlers who planned to exchange vows in a fake commitment ceremony Tuesday night during World Wrestling Entertainment's weekly "Smackdown."

Maybe Andy Kaufman, Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion, would be able to explain this for me, because I sure don't get it: Billy and Chuck, a "gay" tag-team, have been camping it up during the current wrestling season, and were to exchange vows at a fake ceremony during Sept. 10's Smackdown.

"It's a hoot," said [Scott] Seomin, who is [Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation's] entertainment media director in Los Angeles, and has kept on an eye on Billy and Chuck's adventures, given criticism in the 1990s that wrestling frequently glorified gay bashing.

"The audience, from what we've seen, appears to be cheering them on," he said. "While it's entertaining for viewers, it's also enlightening. Because of its teenage audience, 'Smackdown' reaches a lot of potential bullies and gay bashers out there, and what Billy and Chuck are saying is not only 'We're here,' but they also say, 'Don't mess with us.'"

Keller cautions that pro wrestling is still not a gay-friendly work environment: "I've interviewed a lot of other wrestlers who say they feel sorry for Billy and Chuck, that they've ruined their careers. Except for [former wrestler and WWE story writer] Pat Patterson, there's never been anyone in wrestling who's actually come of the closet."

Yet the groom and, uh, the other groom got cold feet at the end, and matrushka-doll-like, they came out of a closet within the closet, announcing their real orientation: heterosexual. At which moment the Justice of the Peace presiding over the ceremony revealed himself to be wrestler Eric Bischoff. A can of whupass opened.

So then. Is wrestling actually turning more gay friendly by staging this fake relationship? Or is there some kind of agenda behind that "gays are deep-down confused heteros" move at the staged ceremony? Maybe I'm just reading too much into what was, like everything else in wrestling, only pretend.

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