Dear gay celebrities: We know. We have eyes. We can tell. We don’t need announcements like the one on People featuring the oh, so obviously gay Clay Aiken, shouting from the cover, “Yes, I’m Gay.” This is like Clay saying, “I have red hair.” Or “I was on American Idol.” And just like Lindsay Lohan’s giggly utterance on Loveline where she admitted, or rather, just confirmed, that she had been dating Samantha Ronson, “for a very long time” was also totally obvious. Because we’ve seen so many pictures of the twosome together, what was once sort of amazingly exciting is about as mundane as pictures of Brangelina toting 20 kids around, the Lohan admission was also a nonrevelation
Still, this is not to say we’re not appreciative. It’s only good when high-profile celebrities come out in huge mainstream mags like People (which is in the running for the most gay-friendly mag outside of The Advocate, when you combine the Ellen-Portia wedding cover with Aiken’s). Aiken told People, “I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn't raised that way, and I'm not going to raise a child to do that."
Not everyone was so thrilled by the news. Newsweek ran an article by Ramin Setoodeh asking, “Is it too little, too late?” which amounted to a public spanking for Aiken’s years of awkward denials.
Writes Setoodeh: “But unlike other gay celebrities who have come out recently, like Neil Patrick Harris or Lance Bass, Aiken denied that he was gay long beyond the point of ridiculousness, and he did it in a way that bordered on homophobic.”
The blogs, papers, and other news outlets were aflutter with Lohan’s casual admission of her relationship with Ronson; MTV News, MSNBC, and the San Francisco Chronicle were among the many that picked it up. Though it garnered lots of press, it was met with a media yawn -- the coverage ended with a period and a shrug rather than an exclamation point.
Kim Stolz at MTV News wrote that “Lindsay Lohan has made being a lesbian an afterthought.”
There was also a healthy amount of pickup by the blogs like Queerty.com and Gothamist.com of the rumor that Ronson didn’t want to play a lesbian bar in New York called Rubyfruit. The story, first reported by the New York Po st , claimed that Ronson was approached to play a benefit for the club, which is on its last legs. The publicist later said he was never approached on behalf of Ronson. (however, we must say, Ronson -- like her brother -- plays for the cutting-edge crowd; this bar’s clientele is not that).
What’s been more interesting to watch this week is what the mainstream media is not covering.
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