mainstream news

In Disney's new mainstream comedy Wild Hogs, four middle aged men dress as leather daddies and prove once again that fear of gay men still is still not funny.

Let's use up all the journalistic cliches at once: For gays and lesbians it was a relatively slow news week, but they say, no news is good news. In the national mainstream press, Milk, the biopic of the San Francisco gay rights hero Harvey Milk starring Sean Penn, continues its run of heavy coverage and positive reviews.

Among many interesting developments last night, mainstream news organizations acknowledged that gay, lesbian, and bisexual voters exist and asked them to identify as such in exit polls. A solid majority of those polled in California and New York preferred that Sen. Hillary Clinton be their next president. The exit polling found that among the 4% of California voters who identified as GLB, 63% voted for Clinton, 29% for Obama, and 1% for Edwards. In New York, 7% of voters self-identified as GLB: 59% voted for Clinton, 36% for Obama, and 3% for Edwards.

When Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi got married in California in August, there were no protests, no career fallout, and no media backlash, just congratulations from all.

When two curiously panicky news outlets scrapped an editorial expressing sadness that entertainer-turned-entrepreneur Merv Griffin remained closeted until his death, they inadvertently proved that "gay panic" is alive and well in Hollywood.