Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

This list-making, as we said, is a popular way to fill pages of papers and magazines during the usually slow holiday news weeks.

Like us, B.A.R. in San Francisco picks marriage equality in a broad sense as its top story.

The status of LGBT relationships absolutely dominated the news throughout the year, with some development popping up virtually every week. While much of what occurred on marriage was discouraging, just about everything short of using that word seemed to be to be positive.

B.A.R.'s Bob Roehr notes that Massachusetts has maintained its equality of marriage opportunity despite concerted attempts by the governor, Mitt Romney, and anti-equality activists to overturn the law. Since Romney will soon be replaced by a Democrat who supports equality and because Massachusetts law makes it hellishly difficult to modify the commonwealth's constitution by initiative, marriage equality there will likely stick.

Court decisions, like the one here in Washington and in New York and New Jersey failed to find a constitutional basis for equality of marriage as such, but urged their state legislatures to find some way to give equal rights to all couples who want to be joined a civil contract.

Editors of Washington's daily newspapers also saw the court decision on marriage equality as a major story of the year. It came in at #7 on their top-ten list.

7. The Washington Supreme Court's divided and contentious decision to uphold the state's ban on gay marriage. In a 5-4 decision, the court said lawmakers have the power to restrict marriage to a man and a woman, and left intact the state's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act.

Both Towleroad and the Washington Blade conglomerate of gay papers took a different tack.

Andy Towle offers a list of the outs, ins, and in-betweens as his contribution to the EOY listmania. All the usual suspects are there: Lance Bass, Mark Foley, Neil Patrick Harris, Ted Haggard, and many more.

The Blade and its corporate brethren think that the continually shrinking closet was the big story of 2006. They note the Hollywood stars who came out and contrast the often easy and unremarkable reaction to that with the often-tortured responses to the more notorious political outings of the year.

Despite his best efforts to squelch rumors about his sexual orientation, Foley was widely considered an "openly closeted" politician, whereas few people seemed to have known about Ted Haggard's double life before it was exposed by a gay male escort. The contrast displays the "different levels of outness" that exist today, Shields said.

The sadness of the Ted Haggard story was that he was a liar and played on people's fears, and couldn't be true to who he was," Shields said. "I think what people saw there was a hypocrisy to the attacks that go on against gay and lesbian couples, and gay and lesbian families."

Former Blade editor Chris Crain, who now publishes a must-read gay blog, mostly agrees with the top-story pick of his erstwhile colleagues, but chastises them for their quotations and their political analysis of the situation.

The Foley story, especially, raised anew questions about when it's justified to "out" someone in government, whether they're holding elective office or not. For Ehrenstein and Rogers, there are no limits to be observed, no boundaries of personal privacy to be respected, and for Ehrenstein at least, dissent is tantamount to complicity. The Task Force's Foreman, as well, though not dirtying his own hands with outings, has publicly said he supports them.

But Crain, like the current Blade/Window Media editors, finds that the dynamics of the closet changed significantly in 2006.

As each new public figure emerges, there remain fewer "firsts" like Ellen DeGeneres in prime time or Elton John in music or Martina Navratilova in sport, to grab the biggest headlines. And so both Neil Patrick Harris ("Doogie Howser, M.D." and "How I Met Your Mother") and T.R. Knight ("Grey's Anatomy") continue to play sexually active heterosexual men in popular TV shows, despite coming out this year in People magazine. As the Blade story notes, popular culture is once again miles ahead of politics.

[If you don't use an RSS newsreader or don't know what that is, you can keep up with the headlines of Towleroad's frequent posts in our Squidoo Gay News lens. Crain is featured in our Squidoo Queer Commentary lens. Although we don't deserve mention in the same paragraph, our headlines are included in our Squidoo Gay Seattle lens.]

Edge, a new group of east-coast gay email/web publications, puts coming-out stories in three of its top-ten spots on their year end review. Marriage equality is their #2 story. But they pick the mid-term elections as the top LGBT story of the year.

At last there may be progress on legislation affecting members of the community that has languished in Congress for the last 12 years of Republican dominance. Gay rights activists are hopeful that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act will pass. The chances also are good that Congress will at least consider a bill to repeal of the ban on gays, lesbians and bisexuals serving openly in the military. Support to do away with Don't Ask, Don't Tell is growing among the public and lawmakers in both parties as the Pentagon finds it increasingly difficult to recruit enough men and women to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And, yes, there were web polls galore. The Malcontent asked their readers "Who's the villain? Donald or Rosie" Over 75% picked The Donald (and most of those votes came before his Mel Gibson moment with the "degenerate" comment in response to her "pimp" salvo).

When gay.com (yes, they offer more than just chat) asked its, umm..., readers (between chat sessions, no doubt) to pick the top stories of the year, they discovered the odd clicking prowess of Colbert Report fans (aka ColbertNation). The voters picked Stephen Colbert as person of the year and the Colbert Report as favorite TV show, surpassing even Project Runway. Gay.com did not reveal how many voters signed up just for that vote.

Finally, the gay.com vote gives us the excuse for that pic at the top of this post (queerfilter.com users who click on shirtless hunk posts gives us the wholly unjustified eye-candy reason [Those who feel cheated should click on the Jake pic or run our hunk-laden Rumor Machine]): Voters picked Jake Gyllenhaal as "Male celeb you most wish was gay". He won easily with 45% of the vote over Ryan Phillippe at 9% and Justin Timberlake at 8%.

Labels: Colbert Report, coming out, eye candy, gay news, marriage equality