The Confirmed Bachelor It was major news in the cultural Cybersphere when the star of this season’s reality show The Bachelor (ABC) came out as gay. And while Colton Underwood waited until after the final episode to break this news, he’d been quite forthcoming from the start about the fact that he was a virgin. He came to be known affectionately as the “Virgin Bachelor” and was praised for his courage in telling the world something that’s hard for a grown man to admit. On the other hand, once he did come out as gay, this revelation would seem to deflate any kudos he earned for the “virgin” admission. A gay guy who’s never had sex with a woman? Pffft. (Be it noted that gay men were once referred to euphemistically as “confirmed bachelors.”) Still, Colton was popular, so now there’s talk of bringing him back to star in an explicitly gay season of The Bachelor. (He can’t be a virgin on this front!) Alternatively, if he ever decides to launch a new career, he’s got a great porn name with which to do it.
Statistics and Damned Lies The human species is in mortal danger of dying out, and it’s all the fault of transgender people, according to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in what can only be called a statistical acid trip with a nasty crash. Invoking various studies, he concluded that there’s been a 20,000 percent increase in the transgender population “in recent years.” He then extrapolated this rise to some arbitrary future date to come up with thirty percent of the population and a demographic meltdown. To get there he queried his guest, one Wilfred Reilly, author of Hate Crime Hoax: How the Left is Selling a Fake Race War, who asserted that “the percentage of people that identified as transgender, traditionally, was about 0.01%.” Of course, no one identified as transgender “traditionally,” because the concept hadn’t been invented. He then cited a study of high school students in which 1.8 percent identified as transgender—surprisingly low, considering the maturity of most teenage boys. The use of phony statistics—sounds scientific!—to reach a foregone conclusion is standard operating procedure for Carlson and his kind. And the dismal conclusion, as usual: society must redouble its efforts to suppress transgender people and their identities. What’s weird is the assumption that without such efforts, vast numbers of people would seek gender reassignment, as if their “cis” identity were hanging by a thread.
Name),” a gay cri de coeur that’s reviewed in this issue. The YouTube video for “Montero” provides a glimpse into just how far our culture has come in its sex and gender mores. The surreal sequence takes us through Genesis 1, from the creation of Adam and then Eve through the serpent’s temptation of Eve and then Adam, followed by the Fall—only this time Adam ends up in a fiery hell giving the Devil a sultry lap dance that both parties seem to enjoy. It didn’t take long for religionists to condemn the video as blasphemous—a charge that’s kind of understandable from their standpoint—at which point Saturday Night Live swung into action. So: the cold open finds us on the set of the (made up) Britney Spears Show, which has landed that ultimate “get” of a guest—God! He’s an amiable sort, his garb and beard a study in white, but soon enough it’s time for the next guest: none other than Lil Nas X (played by Chris Redd). Before long we realize that it’s all a setup to allow Lil Nas X to give God a lap dance! The action is not quite as bumpy and grindy as on the video, but no one doubts that an interracial gay lap dance with God did nothing to appease the fundamentalists.
