Today In Gays: The Senator and The Actor
Two public figures are revealing their gayness today and we are not terribly surprised. We've got Sean Hayes who played the faaahaaabulous Jack on Will & Grace, and trick-driving California state senator Roy Ashburn. Um, duh, fellas. Duh.
For his part, Hayes says that he was never in the closet. He just never really said anything about his sexuality one way or the other. Fair enough, we guess. But Hayes is also kind of patting himself on the back a bit more than he should be. In an oddly aggressive interview with The Advocate he expresses some residual anger over an old Advocate article that chastised him for not publicly coming out:
Finally, Hayes gets to his true point: "I feel like I've contributed monumentally to the success of the gay movement in America, and if anyone wants to argue that, I'm open to it. You're welcome, Advocate."
That sarcasm and anger cover up years of genuinely hurt feelings. "Why would you go down that path with somebody who's done so much to contribute to the gay community?" he asks. "That was my beef about it. What more do you want me to do? Do you want me to stand on a float? And then what? It's never enough.
"That's the thing about celebrity: It sets you up to fail because the expectation is so high of what's needed, what's wanted from you that the second you don't [meet it], you disappoint people."
"Monumentally," Sean? Really? He has a point about how we tend to expect a lot from celebrities, but you can't really boast about your Monumental Importance to the gay movement one minute and then get pissy because a gay magazine speculated that you were, in fact, a gay person the next. Ah well.
Speaking of warring dual lives, State Senator Ashburn, a staunch political opponent of gay rightsers, decided to come out because, well, he'd been caught driving home drunk from a bar with a piece of tail in the carseat next to him. Talking Points Memo says of his big revelation:
Ashburn, a divorced father of four, said that his many votes against gay rights were efforts to represent the conservative views of his constituents.
Oh that's all! He was representing his constituents, guys. Just doing his job. Good for him. Good for all of us.
And that's Today In Gays!