From the 'Homosexual Panic' file: the NY Times (8/20) reviews the movie Without a Paddle and finds it to be a knock-off of 1972's Deliverance. In this case the clueless male campers are pursued by beer-bellied biker marijuana growers with, apparently, rape in mind. They also get to huddle naked in a ball to avoid hypothermia in a downpour while desperately, desperately trying to avoid thoughts of sex. This plan doesn't work and neither does the movie. One could avoid it.
k.d. lang isn't afraid of those big bad woods—according to the Chicago Sun-Times (9/2) she's bought the 1939 wood-and-stone cottage formerly owned jointly by Rock Hudson and lover (at the time) Tab Hunter. 'It was their sex cabin,' k.d. told an interviewer.
The NY Times (9/1) has an article giving the back story of the making of Oliver Stone's soon-to-be-released movie, Alexander starring Colin Farrell. A German producer, Thomas Schuhly, convinced Stone of the story's feasibility and though Schuhly educated Stone about Alex the Great and his history it was Stone who insisted on tackling the Macedonian general's homosexuality. Is Colin making a career out of portraying various aspects of gayness? Perhaps he is part of a new wave of actors who are not gay but who do not feel they have to protect their 'straightness' via homophobia.
Then there's Ronald Reagan's other son, Michael, the one who addressed the assembled Republicans in New York City, says the Chicago Tribune (9/1), and who feels it necessary to announce to the world 'I am homophobic.' He was molested, he says, at age 7 by a camp counselor and believes gay marriage would increase the risk of this happening to other children. Somehow.
An interesting observation by a law school professor, Mark E. Wojcik, in a letter to the Chicago Tribune (8/25) re gays in the military: 'Several years ago I interviewed heterosexual women serving in the Dutch military. They told me that the biggest change they noticed from allowing gays to serve was a marked decrease in the incidence of sexual harassment that the women experienced.' Dare one whip up a fantasy of a dyke saying to an over-testosteroned male: 'Private, you try to touch me again like that and I'll serve you YOUR privates on a platter for breakfast!'
Major article on wives either accidentally or on purpose dipping into their husband's e-mail and discovering the reason he was so obscessed with late-night electronic correspondence was that he was gay—NY Times (8/22). Lesbians rarely use computers this way so it is not common to cause the break-up of a marriage to a straight man but it is becoming a big issue in marriages where the husband is closeted.