homosexual

As I mentioned previously, playwright Jeff Whitty took offense to what he considered Jay Leno's less-than-enlightening attitude towards gays and gay culture, and penned a letter to the late night comedian to let his feelings be known. Apparently Whitty wasn't quite expecting the response his letter would stir up. Some people agreed with his assessments, while others, like gay comedian Jim David (who you should check out if you've never seen him before, because he's hilariously dead pan in his mockery of everyone) feel Whitty needs to just lighten the heck up. Probably the coolest thing to come out of this is that Leno actually contacted Whitty by phone, which, according to Whitty, didn't necessarily solve any issues, but was a nice gesture, regardless.

[via Pop Candy]

Jeff Whitty, a gay playwright whose show Avenue Q is currently on Broadway, has some issues with the way Jay Leno depicts gays on his program, and how he uses gay stereotypes on his show. He penned an open letter to the late night comedian, which you can read here. Now, I don't watch Leno much anymore, but if he does rely on gay stereotypes on his show I would opine that is has more to do with lazy comedy writing than any kind of malicious intent. Of course, one could argue that the means don't justify the end, and Whitty clearly feels that way, pointing out in his letter that gays aren't all Richard Simmons types who dress in leather, and many of them still face prejudice. So what do you guys think? Is Leno a closet homophobe or just some guy who tells crappy, easy jokes?

Thanks to zack, who mentioned the letter here.

Apparently there was some excitement here in Minneapolis last Monday, but I missed it. A student activist group called the Soulforce Equality Riders, who travel around visiting colleges with religious policies against homosexuality, were locked out of North Central University in downtown Minneapolis, a private Christian university. One PR person from the university said the protesters declined an offer last week to have a third party mediate the discussion. Well, whatever the situation was, the group of thirty-three wound up rallying in a park across the street, where they were eventually joined by Star Trek's George Takei (Mr. Sulu) who was in town for a gay pride event at the University of Minneapolis and who recently came out himself. Naturally, he compared their struggle to Star Trek, referring to it as an "equality trek."

This news comes from the National Enquirer, so take it with a bucket of salt, but someone has come forward and said that they have in fact made sweet, sweet love to Clay Aiken, and it isn't a girl.

 

John Paulus claims he met Aiken on a Web site and that Clay was looking for a "discreet BF" (the "BF" stands for "boyfriend" just to clear that up right away). The two allegedly met in a North Carolina hotel room for a night of sensual southern magic. Ah, hells yeah.

This would be a great story, perhaps one for next year's Christmas letter, but I don't believe it. It's from the National Enquirer, so it loses some credibility in that respect. Also, I can't imagine Clay, who stays relatively cool about the whole gay/not gay thing, would risk exposing himself by contacting some random guy via the Web. Clay has money, and if he wants a gay rendezvous with no strings attached he could make it happen. If not, then what's the point of having all that money?

 

The British won't get to see the infamous episode of South Park, which outted Tom Cruise something like 13 times in 22 minutes. Cruise, who has a crazy fear about people thinking he's gay, complained about the episode to Paramount and the production company agreed not to play it again. According to The Register in the U.K., Paramount got worried that Cruise would sue them, as he has sued so many tabloids in the past whenever they 'out' him.

The episode in question aired November 16th here in the states. It featured Nicole Kidman and John Travolta characters who kept pleading for Tom to "come out of the closet." At one point, Kidman's cartoon character says, "Don't you think this has gone on long enough? You're not fooling anyone." It really was a funny episode and I'm sad that our friends in Britain won't see it but I'm sure if you scour the internet hard enough, you'll find it.