Rednecks at the Gay Bar

I was at my favorite gay local watering hole about two weeks ago, when one of the patrons told me and a couple of others in my vicinity a joke.

It was the most vile racist joke I've ever heard in my life. It was not just "politically incorrect" or good-natured racial humor that everyone, black or white, could laugh at -- it's punchline was the "n" word. It is the kind of joke that debases the one who tells it, and also debases everyone who hears it. I was disgusted.

And this was in a gay bar in Greenwich Village in the 21st century!

What's going on here?

Yes, I know there have always been racist gays and homophobic blacks and so on and so on, but on the --mercifully -- rare occasions I encounter these troglodytes I still find it a bit startling. Basically this jerk was telling a redneck joke in a gay bar. His mind-set was the same as people who tell fag jokes. I made this point but I'm sure it went in one ear and out the other.

To their credit, the other people I had been conversing with -- all white -- were also appalled by the joke. The only one who laughed was a guy sitting on the other side of the "joke" teller. The two of them bonded in their thought of me as a humorless [yeah -- right!] person who couldn't take a joke. I and my friends were the assholes -- not them. Amazing. "It's all in fun," said the joke teller.

One of my friends said "If it's all in fun, then go tell that guy at the end of the bar [who happened to be African-American]. " Of course, none of us actually wanted this turd to tell the joke to anyone, but we also knew that he never would.

What creates a gay person like this? Self-hatred, of course. A well-adjusted man has no need to hate another minority group just to feel better about himself. You learn in sociology 101 that prejudice is generally the product of an inferiority complex.

Over the years I have, sadly, met gay men who had issues with Women, Blacks, Jews, and so on, although they are in the minority, let me make that clear. Generally they are not well-adjusted people, and they have issues over their sexuality. I'm sure without a doubt that the person who told the joke is in the closet, and that deep down he's ashamed to be gay. if his parents are still alive he's never told them he's homosexual [although they probably figured it out long ago.] He could probably benefit from counseling or therapy, but he'll never go get help.

He'll just tell his jokes, hoping to encounter the occasional sad stranger who's as fucked up as he is and will also find them funny.

The thing is, he's a middle-aged man who would probably resent being called an old fart. But his jokes -- which used to proliferate thirty years ago and more -- are "old fart," even redneck jokes. They don't make him seem hip or up-to-date, youthful, but very old and out of it. He actually seemed surprised by those of us who found the joke totally offensive. I hope he tries to pick up some younger man someday, tells his little jokes, and discovers just how hopelessly out of date he is. [There was a younger man in the bar that night who also found the joke completely reprehensible.]

It's shocking, shameful, that people like this still exist, but the good news is that where once many others would have joined in with the laughter, nowadays the joke teller is more often put in his place in no uncertain terms.

Schizoid Gays in a Quiet Place

A Quiet Place, an opera composed by Leonard Bernstein, was recently presented at the New York City Opera [not to be confused with the Met] where it got some surprisingly good reviews. A Quiet Place, which had very few American performances during Bernstein's lifetime, began life as a tuneful 1952 one-act entitled Trouble in Tahiti. With an engaging score and a pretty good libretto by Bernstein, Trouble told the story of the dysfunctional marriage of Sam and Dinah. It was a memorable short work, the title of which referred to a piece of "technicolor twaddle" that Dinah goes to see at the movies.

But Bernstein wasn't satisfied with Trouble; it wasn't serious enough, so -- working with librettist Stephen Wadsworth (whose personal life I know nothing of, except that he has a wife) -- Bernstein expanded his little one-act into a full-length opera entitled A Quiet Place, the title taken from one of Dinah's songs in Trouble. It made its debut in Houston in 1983. All of the music from Trouble in Tahiti was used in the new work in flashback sequences.

In the new opera, Dinah has been killed in an accident, and their little boy, Junior, is a schizophrenic. His lover, Francois, is now married to Junior's sister, Dede -- talk about making someone schizophrenic!

Now at this point I must interject that Bernstein was a married homosexual who -- like many married homosexuals do -- probably preferred to think of himself as a hip bisexual. Therefore the whole idea of Francois ditching Junior to marry his boyfriend's sister, may have just seemed like some trendy bisexual chic. In reality, it's an utterly cruel and grotesque situation, which librettist Wadsworth never really explores. I mean, talk about situations that would fuck a guy up. As I wrote in my book The Opera of the Twentieth Century, it's never made clear if Francois' falling for his sister exacerbated or actually engendered Junior's instability. It is suggested that Dede and Francois married out of their mutual love for Junior, who needs looking after, but Francois sings a [second-rate] aria reaffirming his love for and commitment to Dede. Poor Junior.

Perhaps something interesting could have been made of this, but Wadsworth's libretto is pretty lousy, being more pretentious than profound, and does little to illuminate these rather screwed-up characters [I mean, a woman who would marry her brother's boyfriend, and vice versa!], although there's a fairly moving wind-up and Bernstein's relentlessly non-melodic music [aside from the excerpts from Trouble in Tahiti] doesn't help.

What's more interesting is some of the comments Christopher Alden, who directed this latest production of A Quiet Place, made to Olivia Giovetti of Time Out New York Magazine. "There's a lot of Bernstein in many of the characters. [In Francois] there's that fantasy of bisexuality or a gay man suddenly turning straight." As for Junior, Alden says, "It seems a bit of a throwback to the past where anytime gay characters were presented, they had to be shown to be problematical people." While it might have been admirable to present some sort of gay characters in an opera some years ago, it's the Same Old Story when we see a shizoid fag and a "bisexual" man who opts to marry his lover's sister. Sheesh! No thank you, Bernstein!

A Quiet Life looks at homosexuality from the confines of the closet, where Bernstein and others like him resided for most of their lives. It doesn't present a hip look at bisexuality or "sexual fluidity" so much as to all intents and purposes it simply avoids the subject of homosexuality altogether.

Perfect Husbands?

What's it with all these guys named Peterson murdering their wives?

First there's Drew Peterson, the former police sergeant, who's been charged with murdering both his third and fourth wives. I can't get why four women would marry this guy. If he walked into the Eagle I wouldn't give him a first look, let alone a second one.

Then there's Scott Peterson, whose wife Laci went missing. He was later convicted of murdering her [first degree] and their prenatal son [second degree].

And then we've got Michael Peterson, the subject of at least one book [A Perfect Husband by Aphrodite Jones], a foreign documentary, a made-for-television movie starring Treat Williams as Peterson, and many, many hours on Dateline, 20/20 and other news programs.

The most sensational aspect of the case was when the male prostitute Brent Wolgamott was called in to testify that he and Peterson had made arrangements -- never fulfilled -- to hook up for paid sex.

First let's deal with the hustler, also known as "Brad." Whatever he is, Wolgamott is not too bright. He was quoted as saying that the majority of his clients were "predominantly straight with minor homosexual tendencies." Apparently he's never heard of married homosexuals. It makes no sense that a man with supposedly minor homosexual tendencies would explore gay porn web sites with abandon and want to hire a male hooker for sex.

As Jones writes in her book "from the explicit nature of Michael's e-mails, it was obvious that he was not only an adulterer, but that he was perhaps more homosexual than straight." She adds: "the thought of [his murdered wife] Kathleen's marriage being a sham, especially when she was paying for everything ... was all the more hurtful to her sisters and [her daughter] Caitlin."

Michael Peterson claimed that he was "bisexual" and that Kathleen already knew that. He enlisted his brother to say that he knew about Michael's bisexuality since they were teens.

Well, whether Peterson was "bisexual" or just a married, ashamed homosexual -- and I think the latter is more accurate -- I don't think his wife knew the score.

Of course, most married homosexuals don't want to murder their wives, just cheat on them.

Although I must say that more and more we're learning about the gay secret lives of certain men accused of murdering their wives or at least making them disappear forever. [Recently there was the case of murder victim Karen Tipton, whose husband David had gay porn on his computer.] Sure, some of this may be an attempt to demonize a suspect, give him another motive for doing away with the little woman, but given what we know of the whole "down low" business of homosexuality, much of it is probably accurate. While the whole business of murdering your wife in the 21st century because she finds out you're gay [with the resultant exposure, divorce, and financial loss] sounds like a bad Law and Order episode, apparently it sometimes happens.

In any case, it's safe to say that these men -- these murderers of women -- are not Out and Proud members of our community, but dysfunctional and often sociopathic losers whose poor wives pay the price for their inability to accept themselves.

In any case Michael Peterson is spending the rest of his life in prison.

Just as many of these guys spend their whole, pathetic lives in the closet.

Attack of the Self-Hating Homos

Okay, you've heard of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and Attack of the Giant Leeches, but have you ever been subjected to an attack by a self-hating homo? As much as I'd like to think that SHH's are a dying breed, they still exist. Most of them are in the religious ex-gay camps or on the down low, but a few identify as gay and can be found in gay bars and parties. They can strike when you least expect it.

It usually goes like this. SHH is offended by your gay identity because he or she has none of his/her own. Instead they're dealing with a lot of internalized homophobia. They are almost never out of the closet, even to family and [non-gay] friends, even though just about everyone knows that they're gay anyway.

What brings on an attack can be anything, but especially a discussion on gay rights and gay marriage. Self-hating homos will employ the same arguments that straight bigots use when discussing gay marriage and gay rights ["special privileges" to them]. Regardless of how old they are, they're stuck back in the 1970's.

Because they are on the periphery of the gay scene, they have little knowledge of it beyond their own sexual urges. They know little of homophobia or of the struggle for acceptance, and couldn't care less -- to their minds, it doesn't concern them. They tend to eschew relationships and their sex is of the anonymous (as opposed to casual) variety. They have sex not in actual beds and bedrooms but in parked cars and bushes. Even if they are not in heterosexual relationships (wife and kids), they very much resemble those kind of closet cases. Since they think of gay men in the most stereotypical of terms, and feel they are not in any way like them (except, ahem, for the attraction-to-men bit), they want to disassociate themselves as much as possible from gay guys. They deign to have friendships with openly gay men. [As if we need them.]

They speak of gays as if they are somehow apart from them (which in many ways is true; these people are homosexual but hardly Out and Proud). Like straight bigots they will point out all the outrageous [to them] participants in Gay Pride parades -- "those drag and leather queens, why would I want to march with them?" -- blindly ignoring the fact that most participants in Gay Marches are just average folk who happen to be gay. [Let me make it clear that I am not putting down the more flamboyant marchers.]

They speak of total disdain for gay culture, gay life. Because they are essentially unhappy, they blame it all on their being homosexual. They brag about how they hardly ever go to gay bars, how they have few if any gay friends. In their own minds this somehow makes them better than the rest of us. Their superiority complex only masks an inferiority complex -- but it doesn't fool anyone.

An aside: Most of us certainly have and should have heterosexual friends. But whenever I meet a homosexual person who says, in that certain "superior" tone, that most of their friends are straight, I always get an impression that they feel this makes them somehow better in their own eyes because after all, they think heterosexuals are better than gays [or at least that it's better to be straight than gay].

Sometimes you can help a self-hating homo to find acceptance. More often they set up a stony wall of attitude that it's impossible to breach. They need therapy and counseling but will rarely seek it. They prefer to wallow in their misery.

Some of these people stay shivering in their closets. Others do real damage to themselves and others. They never understand that by acting as if there's something wrong with being gay, they insult every gay person they choose to associate with.

SHH's are all over the Internet. They have strong opinions, but their opinions are always ill-conceived and uneducated because, as they admit, they are on the periphery of gay life. Still they persist in mouthing off on message boards and blogs.

Always anonymously.

Some A-holes Never Go Away

You remember Matt Sanchez, the marine who became the Republican party's darling, until they found out he had starred in several gay porn films and had been a prostitute with male clients? Is he gay? Well, if you want to think totally straight guys act in hardcore gay porn films and have sex with other men, go ahead and think he's straight. Oh, what's that? -- he's "gay for pay, huh?" I'm not saying he's gay or bi, but it seems to me that guys who are really hetero can think of easier -- ahem, straighter -- ways of making a dollar. I believe on one radio interview Sanchez claimed that when he was with his male sex clients they weren't really engaging in gay sex (despite the sucking and fucking, yeah) because -- get this! -- his clients were in the closet and didn't think of themselves as being gay. Apparently he doesn't either. Therefore it wasn't gay sex. But it was definitely homosexual, what with there being two guys on the bed and all.

I wouldn't necessarily call Sanchez and his clients, or porn co-stars, gay men --as in "Out and Proud" gay -- but 100% hetero they're not. (I'll have more on this men-who-have-sex-with-men-but-who-are-really- hetero nonsense -- which apparently at least one gay therapist has swallowed -- on a future post.)

As for Sanchez, you'd think this self-hating jerk would have run and hid himself away -- or at least stopped yapping about the gay community -- but he's recently written a piece on "Obama's 'gay' problem" on something called worldnetdaily.

In the article Sanchez writes:

"Obama ruffled LGBT sensitivities when an ex-gay gospel singer headlined during the early days of Obama's presidential run. Gay activists protested to have the singer removed from the campaign The peddlers of pride, diversity, free speech, tolerance and fairness in the workplace wanted the singing black guy fired for disagreeing with them. If that sounds as inconsistent as the vows of two men publicly promising to be monogamous to one another, don't worry; none of this stuff is supposed to make sense..."

Here we go again. Those of us who are oppressed are being "hypocritical" if we protest against a political candidate giving added national exposure to a man who preaches intolerance and who spews ridiculous lies about the gay community. Surely most political candidates would not want to ally themselves with blatant Nazi's or racists, but it's okay to have a homophobe who spouts garbage be highly visible during your campaign? Oh, I get it. We progressive, wimpy gays are just supposed to sit back and let stupid, bigoted people say any damn thing they want about us, especially when they attach themselves to a political candidate, which may give their stupid views more weight and exposure. Blacks and Jews would certainly not put up with that crap, so why should Gays?

As for Sanchez' snide comments about monogamous gay couples, all I can say is they come from a porn star and a prostitute. I couldn't care less about Sanchez' background; I've never been a boy scout and have no moral objection to pornography or prostitution. The trouble is Sanchez' utter hypocrisy. Funny, conservatives like Sanchez are the ones who argue that no one is born gay, that it's a choice (even if it were, which it isn't, that doesn't make it wrong. But homosexuality isn't a choice -- the choice is in deciding to be open and proud as opposed to closeted and dishonest.) So I can imagine what the conservatives Sanchez courts really think of him -- a supposed "straight" guy who chose time and again to engage in homosexual acts -- for money, no less. (Or enjoyment.) By the way, his porn star/prostitute past is not mentioned on worldnetdaily. Wonder why?

I mean, is this guy a complete asswipe or what?

Matt then decides to rewrite history a la Sanchez with this paragraph:

"Ever notice the LGBT advocates constantly compare the same-sex struggle to the civil rights movement? According to polls, African-Americans are the most opposed to the legalization of gay marriage, and no black leader has endorsed the comparison between racial equality and the "right" for pre-op transsexuals to get a taxpayer funded sex change. The liberal interpretation of the civil rights struggle through the rainbow-colored glasses of the "queer theory" activist would have given the Rev. Martin Luther King a nightmare, rather than a dream."

Okay, Sanchez has a hot line to Martin Luther King, eh? Actually, if King were alive today, he might well be pro-gay and pro-LGBT. There are many black leaders who support Gay Rights and Gay Marriages, including New York's new governor David A. Paterson. And he's just one of many. Sanchez is such a pathetic loser that he thinks it's okay to sow divisiveness between the LGBT community and the African-American community, forgetting that there are many people who belong to both communities and not only that a.) many gays fought for civil rights, but that b.) many blacks are entirely sympathetic to, and in part identity with, the LGBT struggle.

But in Sanchez' sad, sorry, self-hating worldview, all that matters is that the defrocked media darling attack the Out and Proud community that snickered at his "straight"ness and recoiled from his hypocrisy. I'm sure he got a big surprise -- thinking the whole gay community would eagerly embrace this modestly-attractive ex-porn star and hooker -- But I'm so hot how can they reject me? he thinks -- instead of puking. Hell, he could be the hottest porn star-hooker on the planet. Stupid is not sexy.

So puke is what we all did, and will continue to do every time he opens his mouth and attacks us. Maybe someday he'll get the message and just go away.

Matt Sanchez -- forgotten but not gone.

Silent Partner

NOTES ON A DISCARDED WIFE or DINA MATOS MCGREEVEY'S SIDE OF IT

I have already recorded my (mostly negative) reactions to Jim McGreevey's book The Confession on this blog. Now I'll relate my reactions to his spouse's tome, Silent Partner, as well as the recent "news" story involving McGreevey's aide Teddy Pedersen and the alleged threesomes he had with the couple.

First of all, as I've said before, I have always been sympathetic to women who inadvertently marry homosexual men and whose lives are devastated when those men finally come out of the closet. Some of those men can't deal with being gay and get married in a more or less "honest" attempt to be straight. Others, like McGreevey, pretty much know that they're homosexual but get married because they can't give up heterosexual privileges, and feel that being perceived as straight will take them further in life -- and in politics. I agree with DMM (Dina Matos McGreevey) that her husband -- certainly with his second marriage to Dina and perhaps his first as well -- was the latter kind of homosexual male. I have zero sympathy for him. Sure, he may have had religious and family pressures, but so do other gay men who still manage to become Out and Proud. Many men who are older than McGreevey came out, paid their dues, while McGreevey blithely ignored the Gay Rights movement in the name of ambition. Women like DMM have to realize that they did not marry a gay man (not if you use the term "gay" to describe someone who's Out and Proud, as I do); she married a sneaky, self-hating, Larry Craig-style homosexual, a different animal entirely.

[Another clue: Homo men in denial generally wind up with girlfriends or wives who seem to fit a certain stereotype, a category that DMM and McGreevey's first wife do not belong to. These other women are not as attractive as their husbands, are frequently overweight, are not very sexy, and often have more money than the husband or boyfriend. I have seen this pattern so often over the years that friends and I have joked that their must be a factory that spits out Gay Guys' Girlfriends! However, as I say, neither DMM nor McGreevey's first wife, both of whom are very attractive women, fit this pattern. They are, in a sense, decorative trophy wives for the well-dressed homosexual politician/executive who needs to project a certain image. Needless to say, DMM --and undoubtedly his first wife as well -- is an intelligent women of accomplishment and deserved a lot better.)

Except for one short instance, DMM sort of ignores the whole subject of homosexuality. Like many a straight democrat (including Obama and Clinton), she supports gay domestic partnerships but thinks that "marriage is a sacrament reserved for a union between a man and a woman." (That alone may make many people lose sympathy for her and I confess that it doesn't thrill me.)

Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage is compelling, readable, and well-written. Oddly, I enjoyed it more than I did McGreevey's memoir. DMM clearly and concisely explains her point of view. However much you may want to take what she says with a grain of salt -- how could she help but be embittered? -- her portrait of McGreevey is not a pleasant one. DMM only found out that McGreevey was going to come out as "a Gay American" when she was handed a copy of his speech not long before the event itself. There was no discussion beforehand and, according to her, McGreevey coldly gave her exact instructions on what to say and do during a press conference that must have been unbelievably humiliating to her. She writes that after McGreevey told her about Golan Cipel's attempted blackmail -- and even after the press conference -- he hardly dealt with her at all (and only gave her a half-hearted apology weeks later) perhaps out of embarrassment.

DMM writes that when their baby was due at any moment, McGreevey flew to Las Vegas to be with his lover Golan Cipel. "Lust," she writes, "it seemed, trumped everything else." Dina misses the point that it wasn't just lust that had McGreevey neglecting his wife to fly to his lover, it was romance. Generally, married homosexuals (who are bisexual in the technical sense but are innately homosexual) such as McGreevey, take huge risks or come out once they finally develop emotional feelings for another male. This may have helped McGreevey begin to develop some kind of gay identity; maybe not. [In any case he only "came out" -- after he and Cipel were no longer together -- due to the blackmail. Otherwise, he might still be in the closet and using DMM as a beard.]

There are always two ways of looking at situations like this. For the gay community, a person's coming out and accepting themselves is a cause for celebration. Unfortunately, for the discarded wife or husband, it's the exact opposite. Of course, many straights see a spouse's coming out as some sort of tragedy -- a sentiment I always find rather obnoxious, although I understand it -- and this attitude is certainly intensified if a person is homophobic.

While I wouldn't quite describe her as "gay-friendly" necessarily -- maybe because she simply knows so little about the subject, ironically -- DMM doesn't indulge in gay-bashing in her book. Admirably, she acknowledges her husband's contributions while rightly condemning his utter stupidity in giving his boyfriend a post -- related to national security no less -- that he was not at all qualified for and which could have had serious consequences. However much McGreevey may have wanted to come out and declare his love for Cipel deep down, he certainly went about it in the wrong way. As I've said before, McGreevey is no gay hero and should not be seen that way by anyone.

Recently one of McGreevey's former male aides, Teddy Pedersen, has claimed that he had threesomes with both Jim and his wife, and that Dina had to know all about her husband's homosexuality. However, he also states that his sexual interactions were strictly with Dina, and that at the time of these alleged incidents he didn't know if McGreevey were gay or not. So if he didn't know, why does he think that Dina did? The couple may have been swingers -- although I tend to doubt it -- but unless McGreevey had actual sex with this aide right in front of Dina, how would she know? There are straight guys who like to watch their wives have sex with other men. Somehow I can't see McGreevey bothering with this, however. [NOTE: DMM has denied the threesomes story, saying it was fabricated by McGreevey and Pedersen, who is a good friend of the former governor's. Jim McGreevey says that the stories are true. As of this posting, the McGreevey's are still locked in a bitter divorce battle and scurrilous charges will undoubtedly go back and forth. McGreevey wants people to believe DMM knew he was homo all the time; I don't think such was the case.]

Unless they marry men whom they already know have an attraction to other men, be they gay, bi, or even straight-identified, women generally don't know that their husbands are gay. In fact, I believe DMM when she writes that she actually thought her love rival was McGreevey's first wife. McGreevey even went so far as to throw a party for the woman, without inviting Dina! He told Dina that his ex-wife hadn't been in the states for a while and he wanted her old friends to have a chance to see her. Sounds somewhat reasonable, but it's also another in a long line of McGreevey's utterly thoughtless actions in regards to his second wife. Dina only found out about the party from somebody else.

According to DMM, McGreevey lied in his book when he claimed that their daughter was living with him and his partner. She writes that she found much support at the Straight Spouse Network. [I'm not at all surprised that such an organization exists, but saddened that even in the 21st century we've got this kind of shit going on.] The Straight Spouse Network is pro-gay and, unlike DMM, even supports gay marriage. The theory is that these kinds of hurtful sham marriages, such as the McGreevey's, do not help anyone, and might become a thing of the past with increased (self)acceptance of homosexuality as well as an acceptance of gay marriage equality. The SSN is also against conversion and religious "therapy" as practiced by the ex-gay movement. Good for them!

I suppose some may be surprised that I, a gay man and activist who always rejoices when someone comes out of the closet, seem to support DMM more than Jim McGreevey. I think I've explained myself, but to reiterate: McGreevey only came out because he was forced to, and he treated his wife miserably. Now that he's out of the closet he may or may not become a nicer person, but he and I are not of the same species. I paid my dues -- he was just a craven user and adulterer. I came out in my twenties, and I have never used women as beards, although I had enough of a hetero component in my make up to do so had I chosen.

Jim McGreevey has a new man in his life. Hopefully Dina will have a new man in her life, too, in the near future. Perhaps one day when she's in a happy marriage, she'll change her attitude toward marriages for well-adjusted gay people, getting past her religious intolerance and negative experiences with a self-hating closet case.

Gay versus "Ex-Gay" -- Guess Who Wins?

Just watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which featured a sketch in which a medical mystery examiner investigated the case of one Wayne Besen [photo on the left], who realized he was gay at an early age. Besen seeks the “cure” which is promised by Richard Cohen, the asshole author of a self-published 1991 book entitled Coming Out Straight. Cohen was a self-hating homosexual who was celibate for a decade, got married and had three children, had a male lover on the side for a time, but still insists he is totally straight. Sure.

The sketch featured the real Cohen, who didn't seem to realize he was being made fun of – mercilessly. I don't recall the audience being told that Wayne Besen is actually a gay activist who writes wonderful pieces on his web site, and is also the author of Anything But Straight, which excoriates the ex-gay movement. [I'm not certain why the audience wasn't let in on the joke.]

Cohen demonstrates some of his idiotic methods for turning people from gay to straight on the bemused reporter, who suggests that Besen give them a try. Six months later he checks in with Besen, and finds him lustily necking with a boyfriend on the sofa.

Besen was a good sport to participate in this, but I was a little disappointed that he wasn't interviewed or introduced by Stewart, who instead chatted with another author. Still, I'm sure Besen was glad that the show zapped some of these ex-gay idiots as they deserve.

A little nitpicking: There were some dumb moments, but I guess it's only fair – considering the sketch was basically pro-gay and geared for a largely straight audience -- that the presumably straight reporter (I know nothing about the comic actor who portrayed him) act a bit uncomfortable with all the gay – and “ex-gay” -- goings-on. I know they were making fun of Cohen, but the business with the reporter tossing a football at him – which Cohen fumbles – is kind of dopey, especially now that we all should know that there are plenty of gay athletes who'd have no trouble catching a football [a fairly useless talent except on the football field]. We know Cohen isn't straight not because he can't catch a football but because his admitted gay past and boyfriend tell us all we need to know.

What about the three kids? you might ask. Well, most gay men are perfectly capable of having sex with women, even if [for some] it's only a kind of hands-free masturbation as they penetrate the female orifice. (No, we won't get into bisexuality as this point, thank you.) If Cohen was unhappy leading a gay lifestyle, that was his business. But his trying to make a name and career for himself, exploiting people as full of self-hatred as he is to make a buck, is deplorable. To prove that he is now completely straight, Cohen let out a gross "manly" belch [I guess he thinks gay people can't burp – even though he did]. What a buffoon!

On the plus side, we got to see the good-looking Besen happily necking open-mouthed with an equally attractive male lover. Way to go, Wayne! (The irony is that Cohen would probably be very happy to neck with Besen, who would probably want to throw up at the very thought.)