The Washington Post grumbles today about male actors kissing each other in movies. Not that they think that it's wrong, just that in every fucking press interview ever the only question anyone really wants the unfortunate straight actor to answer is "so was it gross and weird to make out with another dude?" It's a tiring line of questioning that can start to feel really offensive and gross—in that way that it indicates some sort of insidious bedrock masculine patriarchy in our society, and other bullshit college phrases—though some actors, like Milk star James Franco, handle the questioning maturely enough. Really what the whole Issue tells us is something pretty simple. We need more openly gay actors.

Not so we can all spritz around and congratulate everyone for being so gloriously open minded. No, those parties start to get a bit wearisome after a while. Alls we want is for those dumb interview questions to go away. If Jake Gyllenhaal would just come out already, he could suck mug with any dude in any movie he wanted and never again would we have to watch some shitty reporter lean forward in their canvas chair, their eyebrow raised archly, and snidely saying: "So Jake... what was it like..." I mean, it's miserable for the actors too, because (usually) they're actual professionals who realize that the job is the job. So they grimace and tip toe around and the whole thing is just dumb.

So let's up the publicly gay actor quotient so we'll never have to endure reel after reel from the same hideous junket of some actor talking about stubble and stuff. It might mean that, for a while, until we grow up a little bit, that only these gay actors can play the gay parts (and vice versa, sorry T.R. and Neil Pats). But it's a price we're willing to pay to never, ever again have to read anything like what Chris Potter, a Queer as Folk actor, told MSNBC a while back:

"Soon as they say 'cut,' you spit. You want to go to a strip bar or touch the makeup girls. You feel dirty. It's a tough job."