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has become the universal metaphor for all manner of private
revelation—a testament to the fact that at one time being gay
was
the quintessential secret to be guarded at all costs.
Sweeping Around
Curling is one of those sports that we hear
about once every four years during the Olympics, have a few
laughs over, and quickly forget. It’s that zany game that involves
launching a 44-pound stone down an icy lane with the goal of
landing it on a bull’s-eye at the other end, complete with sweep-
ers who try to alter its trajectory. It’s a serious sport in lands of
ice and snow. Take Canada, which has so many curling leagues
that it even has all-gay curling leagues—twelve, in fact, each
with its own set of four-member teams. Every team has a name,
and here’s where the fun begins. For starters, there’s the Pacific
Rim league, whose teams include Don’t Curl for Me Argentina,
Sweeping Beauties, Fruit of the Broom, and Curls Gone Wild.
Other leagues are known for their costumes and themes: at one
tournament, players dressed as Disney villainesses; others have
gone with
Golden Girls
and
Wizard of Oz
themes. A team
marched in last year’s Vancouver Pride parade with T-shirts that
read, “I swept with your husband.” Silly stuff, perhaps, but read-
ers of
The New York Times
(Nov. 14, 2016) needed a diversion.
Schock and Audit
When first we reported on Aaron Schock,
he was a newly minted U.S. Congressman, an Illinois Republi-
can who was noteworthy for his great looks, workout regimes,
photo shoots for men’s fitness magazines, and anti-gay votes
in Congress. Also for
the fact that he was
totally not gay, in-
criminating photos
be damned. We next
encountered Schock
when he was in hot
water for financial
malfeasance, but the
story was all about
what
he’d used the
diverted funds
for
: a
complete makeover of his D.C. office to replicate a room on
Downton Abbey
. Perhaps we should have taken his legal troubles
more seriously, as recently he was indicted on 24 criminal
counts. Curiously, though, just weeks before the indictment,
Schock had emerged from nearly two years of obscurity with
the kind of media blitz that we had come to know and love: the
self-promoting tweets and Facebook posts, the half-naked pho-
tos of Aaron working out, engaging in water sports, and so on.
He remains in the closet—and may soon be in the slammer—but
the important thing is that he still looks fabulous.
Post-election Appeal
If there’s any upside to the 2016 elec-
tion, it is that human rights organizations like Lambda Legal
and the Human Rights Campaign (as well as the ACLU and
NAACP
) are being flooded with donations. We believe this mag-
azine also plays an important role in defending GLBT rights
and freedom of expression.
The G&LR
is a nonprofit organi-
zation, so your gift is fully tax-deductible. To make a donation,
please visit our website at
www.GLReview.org.Jack Out of the Box
When former
Will & Grace
costar Sean
Hayes came out as gay last fall, it wasn’t exactly earthshatter-
ing news; most people had assumed as much. However, Hayes
had been studiously coy about his sexuality up to that point,
and it would be wrong to confuse his flamboyantly gay char-
acter, Jack, with the actor playing that role. Still, he was aw-
fully good at it... (Plus, he does a mean impression of Cher.) In
any case, when he finally came out at
an award ceremony in L.A., he could
not have been more apologetic: “In
my mind, my lucky break was inex-
tricably tied to me thinking that I had
to stay in the closet in order to keep
moving forward. Looking back at my
choice to stay silent, I am ashamed
and embarrassed.” Okay, he did it for
career reasons; but one wonders: per-
haps it was the very flamboyance, the stereotypical gayness,
of Jack that made it so hard for Hayes to come out. For one
thing, he wanted to avoid being typecast: I may be gay, but I’m
not
that
gay. And hey, he wants to be thought of as a good actor,
and playing Jack if you
are
Jack isn’t exactly a stretch.
Be
the Victim
In the “wedding cake wars” following the le-
galization of same-sex marriage in various states, one of the
players was a bakery in Oregon calledAfter Sweet Cakes, whose
owners, Aaron and Melissa Klein, were sued for refusing to bake
a cake for a gay couple. InApril 2015, an Oregon court awarded
the plaintiff $135,000 in damages, a fine that the Kleins paid in
full (and placed in escrow pending appeal). Now the Kleins are
closing the bakery, and the right-wing media have rallied to their
cause. “The Kleins were literally run out of business by an anti-
Christian mob,” wrote Fox’s Todd Starnes in an article titled
“Family bakery closes after left-wing bullies finally get their
pound of cake.” What’s curious is that the Kleins are known to
have received over $420,000 in donations from supporters, more
than enough to pay that pesky fine. Also, wouldn’t you know,
they’ve suddenly started popping up on the right-wing speaking
circuit to tell their tale of woe. But, of course, they had to close
the business in order to
have
a tale of woe to tell. Now they can
have their cake and—well, you know the rest.
Different Closets
“Oregon’s Bisexual Governor Comes Out
as a Domestic Violence Survivor,” read the headline—the kind
that TomWolfe used to write whole essays about after doing a
double take. What we notice here is that the governor’s bisex-
uality is casually assumed, while her history of domestic abuse
is an occasion for “coming out.” Sure enough, the article con-
firms that Governor Kate Brown is indeed bi and a victim of
domestic abuse at an unspecified time in the past. That there
are darker secrets than being homo- or bisexual is worth notic-
ing—along with the fact that “the closet” and “coming out”
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