 
Above left: The uber-macho-looking Brit pop star Robbie Williams, pictured last month, just accepted a lot of cash for libel from publishers whose publications reported that he is gay -- which surely means that he's heterosexual. (AFP photo) Above right: Tom Cruise as featured in an episode of "South Park" called "Trapped in the Closet," which aired last month. In the episode (according to TV.com), former Mrs. Cruise Nicole Kidman and others implore Cruise to come out of the closet into which he has locked himself, and fellow Scientologist John Travolta joins Cruise in the closet. Below: Spokane, Wash., Mayor James E. West has just been recalled by voters and must leave office this month. West served as a conservative Repugnican in the state Legislature, where he voted against gay-friendly legislation, and then went on to use the office of mayor to try to get young men into the sack.
Gay shit in the news
There's been a lot of gay shit in the news lately. And not just that Elton John and George Michael are marrying their boyfriends.
There is the single mother in Spokane, Wash., who just brought down Spokane's Repugnican mayor, James E. West.
West, according to The Associated Press, is a 54-year-old "former Boy Scout executive and sheriff's deputy [who] was elected mayor in 2003 after serving more than two decades as a conservative Republican in the state Legislature, where he voted against gay-friendly bills."
The AP reports that "the [Spokane] Spokesman-Review newspaper reported in May that West was a closeted homosexual who visited gay chat rooms using his city-owned laptop computer and offered internships and other favors to young men he hoped to have sex with."
Spokane resident Shannon Sullivan, whom the AP describes as "a single mother with a high-school education and no legal background," started a campaign to recall West and, the AP notes, "shepherded her petitions for a recall vote through superior and state high court challenges brought by the mayor's lawyers."
"Shannon has said she started the [recall] campaign after finding herself at a loss to explain newspaper reports of West's behavior to her 9-year-old son," the AP reports, quoting her as having said, "Elected officials need to be held to higher standards."
She kinda sounds like another Erin Brockovich -- which is a good thing. We need more Erin Brockoviches, women who, like Shannon Sullivan and Cindy Sheehan, one might think are pretty powerless but who end up bringing down corrupt stupid white men. (Sheehan, if nothing else, brought the discussion of pulling U.S. troops from Iraq -- and the discussion of why the Bush regime invaded Iraq in the first place -- to the national table. If she weren't so powerful and if she didn't pose a serious threat to the Bush regime, the wingnuts wouldn't be attacking her as viciously as they have been attacking her.)
Anyway, West lost the recall election and must leave office this month, after the recall election results are certified, the AP reports. He has not been charged with a crime, the AP notes.
West's biggest crime, in my book, is hypocrisy, and I hope that Sullivan and the other voters of Spokane elected to recall him not because he's gay, but because he's a fucking hypocrite and because he abused his power.
A politician who has voted against gay rights and then is found to have used a city-owned computer to visit gay Web sites and to have used his position as mayor to try to get young men into the sack -- and who then gets recalled -- well, you call that poetic justice, something that is sweet to see and, unfortunately, something that we rarely see where stupid white men and their countless crimes are concerned.
Again, just as long as Sullivan and the other voters viewed West's crime as his hypocrisy and his abuse of power -- and not his being gay.
In other gay-related news, British pop star Robbie Williams just accepted libel damages and apologies from publishers of magazines and newspapers that reported (and have since retracted) that Williams is a closet case.
Now, the publications didn't just say that Williams is gay; they described lurid acts of sluttiness on his part:
People newspaper apparently reported that Williams "had engaged in casual and sordid homosexual encounters with strangers," according to the Reuters news story, which adds that the newspaper alleged that "Williams had enticed a stranger into a toilet in a Manchester club where the two men performed sex acts on each other and where Williams asked the stranger to engage in a further sex act. It also said the 31-year-old [Williams] had another sexual encounter with a stranger in the streets behind the club a year later."
Similar allegations appeared in Star and Hot Stars magazines last year, Reuters notes.
Now, I hope that Williams' problem with the apparently trashy newspaper and magazine stories isn't that they reported him as being gay, whether he is or not (he has always been at least a mild to moderate blip on my gaydar, but -- I say this so that he doesn't sue me -- I have no idea whether he has ever had sex with another male or not), but that they painted him as a slut.
I mean, I don't care if you report that I'm gay, because I am gay and I don't care who in the fuck knows, and if he or she has a problem with it, well, that's his or her fucking problem, and as long as he or she doesn't try to make his or her fucking problem my fucking problem, such as by trying to violate my human rights, then all is OK.
But if you were to report that, say, I routinely service closet cases at their Log Cabin Republican meetings, well, then, Houston, we have a problem.
True, I'm not sure which would bother me more: The allegation that I would even think about touching a Repugnican fag's* pole with a 10-foot-pole or the allegation that I'm a slut.
But it would be one or both of those two things that bothered me, not that you "outed" me, since I'm not in the closet in the first place.
My point is that I'm assuming that the sordid reports of Williams' sordid acts of public same-sex sex were false, and I hope that Williams' problem with the assumedly false reports is that they painted him as a slut, not that they painted him as gay.
Because if I sue you because you said I'm gay, that certainly suggests that there is something incredibly inherently awful about being gay.
FindLaw.com just ran an interesting column on this topic.
FindLaw.com columnist Julie Hilden, Yale Law School Class of '92, tackles the question of whether Tom Cruise can sue the creators of "South Park" for suggesting that he is gay -- and then tackles the question of whether, if he can sue, he should sue.
Hilden writes that a recent episode of "South Park," which, unfortunately, I did not see (I don't watch TV, but if I did, I'd watch "South Park"), is titled "Trapped in the Closet," and in the episode, "Cruise literally goes into a closet, and won't come out. Other characters beg him to 'come out of the closet,' including the animated version of his ex-wife, Nicole Kidman. The Kidman character promises Cruise that if he comes out of the closet, neither she nor 'Katie' will judge him. But the Cruise character claims he isn't 'in the closet,' even though he plainly is."
Hilden notes that in the past Cruise has sued for defamation those who have claimed that he is a closet case.
Hilden, if I interpret her column correctly, concludes that parody/satire is generally broadly protected by the First Amendment, and that therefore Cruise probably couldn't win damages against the creators of "South Park."
Hildren then raises what to me is a more important issue.
She notes that "Cruise has chosen, in the past, not only to challenge allegations that he cheated or lied to cover up his alleged homosexuality, but also to directly challenge allegations that he is gay." Writing about a specific defamation lawsuit of Cruise's, she remarks:
Cruise already had a strong suit based on suggestions that he was an adulterer and a liar -- cheating on his wife and misrepresenting the character of their marriage to the public. Did he need to also directly take aim at the statement that he was gay?
Imagine a white person in the Jim Crow South suing to counter rumors that he was hiding African-American ancestry, and the problem with such a claim becomes plain: The purpose of the claim is to restore the plaintiff to a prior, undeserved position of societal privilege, so he can avoid the maltreatment, racism -- and if he is a racist himself, the shame -- that he would otherwise suffer. The claim itself, then, rests on a malicious societal hierarchy.
The same is arguably true of a claim by a straight person that he has been falsely labeled as gay: Such a claim takes advantage of the courts so that one person can escape bias that others unfairly suffer.
It also caters to societal bias by saying, in effect, "Stop thinking less of me; I'm not really gay." But imagine, again, the parallel claim: "Stop thinking less of me, I'm not really African-American."
Hilden then discusses whether or not courts should continue to allow plaintiffs to sue for defamation simply because they have been said to be homosexual. "In this day and age ... it's worth considering whether labeling people as gay really defames them, such that their reputations are truly damaged," she remarks.
She concludes: "Perhaps a straight person's being falsely considered gay should remain an eye-opener, and cease to be a tort.... In my view, a 'straight-person's privilege' isn't the kind the courts should be protecting. Indeed, a friend of mine who's a practicing First Amendment lawyer believes this so strongly [that] he won't, as a matter of professional ethics, argue a case for libel-by-claim-of-homosexuality in court. He'd rather be on the right side of history, and decline."
She ends her column:
While Tom Cruise won't be able to successfully sue "South Park" for its satire, he may have the option to sue others who claim he is gay in the future. When he does have this opportunity, he may want to think twice -- and, at a minimum, rephrase his suit to focus on false claims that he is a liar, not false claims that he is gay.
I agree with Hilden's conclusion: To allow people to sue for defamation simply because they have been said to be homosexual only reinforces the unconstitutional, immoral, bigoted and un-American idea that gay men and lesbians are less than heterosexual men and women.
Go ahead and tell the world that I'm gay.
Just don't tell the world that I service members of the Log Cabin Repugnicans -- because that would be defamation.
*I'm gay. I may say "fag." If you are not gay, you may not.
9:09:39 AM 
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