How Hollywood Keeps Stars in the Closet

E! Online, abuzz with gossip that a celebrity is coming out of the closet in a major magazine on Wednesday, took the opportunity to ask how Hollywood keeps gay stars from living openly.

"Is it legal for a movie studio to have a clause in a celeb's contract that prohibits them from being openly gay?" asked a reader to E!'s "Ask the Answer B!tch" blog. "Wouldn't that be considered discriminatory?"

Answer B!tch Leslie Gornstein believes this sort of a contract would be very difficult to put in writing, and if the agreement was between a full-time employee and employer it would probably be illegal; California does protect people from sexual orientation discrimination at work. But what about a relationship between, say, an actor and an agent?

"I talked to an array of people for this story, ranging from well-sourced gossip columnists to top-flight attorneys," Gornstein writes. "And none of them flat-out denied that such contracts exist. In fact, at least one source tells me they do exist, but not necessarily in the explicit way you might think they do. From what I am able to gather, a contract between an agency and an actor may dodge the exact issue of 'coming out.' But it might ban other sorts of telltale activities."