Oprah, Lesbianism, and a Colonoscopy

The gays are bringing the heartwarmth to the airwaves lately. Don't ask me why. Maybe it's sweeps.

Now, in life, it's always a mixed bag of stuff. All grown folks know this. A bit of awesome happens for the queers in one corner of the globe while at the same time something horrifying takes place somewhere else. But it's weird, when you're paying attention to the media and our little niche in it, how things seem to go in waves. For a while all you'll see is doom: some new injustice or embarrassment or asshole politician trying to make our lives miserable with the help of his newfound friends from religions he formerly demonized.

And then, without warning, it's all smiles and love and cotton candy and glamour shots and people in love with Adam Lambert. And there's no way of predicting which way the tide will turn.

Take Isis, for example. Maybe you saw her get eliminated a couple seasons ago on America's Next Top Model because, as the show's first transgender contestant, she couldn't tuck the candy well enough to do a swimsuit shoot. Don't laugh. Sometimes bulges ruin dreams.

But now Isis is a woman on the outside like she always was on the inside. This is thrilling news for anyone who has made her, in the words of Tyra Banks, "the most Googled woman" in Top Model history. She was just on The Tyra Banks Show this week to talk about her sex-reassignment surgery and to introduce her valiant mother and her adorable boyfriend. After Tyra tried to show true empathy by discussing her own inability to control supermodel farts after a colonoscopy, we all got to learn about "dilating," which is the thing that happens after someone has male-to-female surgery. They place rods inside the new vagina to keep it open during the healing process. Isis explained that it's all quite painful, but the new boyfriend got down on one knee and gave her an engagement ring as incentive to keep her eyes on the prize. Love was totally in the air, the crowd went crazy for it, Tyra made TiVo-rewind-worthy flatulence noises and then spoke in a goofy low voice, as if to imitate the boyfriend, saying, "C'mon, baby, you gotta dilate." It was magical television.

They also brought out Katelynn, the transgender woman from the latest season of The Real World . (I know, much like my recent revelations about the ongoing nature of The Jerry Springer Show , I didn't know The Real World was still on either.) Katelynn didn't have a ton to say, other than about how this one homosexual on the show totally outed her before she could do it herself. When is someone going to write the trans etiquette book? Not that this loudmouthed clown couldn't have just used his common decency and good sense to let the lady explain her own story to the rest of the cast. But still, someone should write that book, if for no other reason than it will give trans people something to use when they need to smack wrongdoers in the head.

Changing subjects. I used to date this guy back in Texas. He was what you'd call "identifiably gay." And by that I mean he was crazy-faggy-acting. He also loved football. Like, he couldn't get enough of watching the Dallas Cowboys. He'd go to games. Tailgate parties. He'd watch games on TV with other guys.

I, however, was too punk-rock for sports, and so it was a thing we never shared.

After we broke up he'd tell me about going to sports bars and hitting on straight guys. And I remember warning him that he was insane for doing that. Though he was the size of a defensive end, I still worried for his safety. But apparently sports bars are a hotbed of gay inclusiveness now and my ex-boyfriend was just on the vanguard of that movement.

The people at ABC News have this thing called What Would You Do? It's a set-up situation where they put people in weird circumstances and watch how others react. So the show takes two gays and plops them onto a couple of stools at a suburban New Jersey sports bar and encourages them to gently canoodle. Nothing too wacky. In fact, they put an equivalently amorous hetero couple in the bar too, along with a fake gay-hater whose job it was to stir the shit and make indignant comments.

Guess what happened?

That's right, the bar ganged up on the fake-phobe and kicked him out, then rallied around the gays and bought them drinks. So there you go, gays. It's totally OK to hold hands and politely smooch it up with a guy in a sports bar now. No blowjobs, though, OK? Society's not quite ready for that yet.

At least not until society is a little drunker.

And finally, Oprah did yet another episode on women leaving their husbands for other women. Specifically, they're leaving their husbands for lesbian personal trainer Jackie Warner. This makes Jackie really popular now but also, I can imagine, really tired too. I guess I owe that loony Patti Stanger, the Millionaire Matchmaker, an apology, though. She said in her weird online gay dating advice video clip that making the switch to lesbianism was a trend. And now Oprah is saying it too. So I guess I was wrong. You ladies just float where the wind takes you, apparently. We fags are so set in our ways. As a species we're simply not as evolved. I feel shame.

And speaking of shame -- because there's always got to be a little bit, right? -- the media isn't doing an amazing job of spreading the word on the mass executions of gay men in Iraq. In that country being gay is punishable by death, and it seems that almost 130 Iraqis are scheduled to be killed very soon if international human rights organizations can't halt the state-sanctioned murders.

So once you're done steaming up the sports bar, go to this website and see how you can help. It's literally the least you can do.

https://iraqilgbtuk.blogspot.com/