Can anyone else tell me why Elton John, one of the biggest and richest gays that is out there, would accept at any price to perform for the country’s biggest homophobes and demagogues at Rush Limbaugh’s fourth wedding?  The absurdity all around is incredible.  From Ken Layne at Wonkette

Beloved American comedian Rush Limbaugh met a lady while he was divorcing his third wife a few years back, and now that new lady is Limbaugh’s fourth wife. Exciting! But how do you make such a special once-every-couple-of-years event even more exciting? If you’re Rush Limbaugh, you pay One Million Dollars to a very famous singer and piano player who is also very famously homosexual and British and a gay-marriage supporter and AIDS activist — and that’s how, we guess, Sir Elton John wound up performing at Limbaugh’s latest wedding. But the sexiest men at the Miami occasion were the guests. Karl Rove, Fred Thompson, Sean Hannity, Rudy Giuliani, Clarence Thomas … it wouldn’t have been any more fantastic if God Himself decided to rain burning poison shit from the sky, forever.

And some of the comments:

• It’s one thing to be gay. It’s another thing to be a gay whore. What the Hell was Elton John doing serenading the most obnoxious bigoted swine in America?!!  Dolmance   says at 8:27 am, June 7th, 2010

• All whores, not just Elton: how could anyone kiss that guy’s ass unless they were getting paid? charlesdegoal says at 8:38 am, June 7th, 2010

• Jesus. That guest list. Too bad the oil slick couldn’t have washed up on shore and mired them all in icky, flammable goo.  Elton John is a whoooorah.  freakishlystrong says at 8:43 am, June 7th, 2010

Elton John: whore.  Enjoy the million!  Not only are you known as an asshole, you’re also now known as a whore.  Goodbye yellow brick road, indeed.

The audience he played for: hypocritical demagogues.

Rush’s audience on the radio: idiots who don’t see that many of these people just feed your prejudice, without really believing what you believe.  See, they are demagogues who are sane, ranting to insane people who give them money for those rants, who then turn around and give that money to gays.

Sometime in the 1990′s I read one of those “100 Things A Man Must Do Before He Dies” articles in Esquire or GQ. Along with must-see vacation spots and things a man must buy were, ‘Pay for sex’ and ‘Be paid for sex’.  I used to take lists like this–surely written by people who knew more about life than I–seriously to a degree that I find embarrassing today.  But out of that entire list, the only must-dos that I remember exactly are those two.

I had not thought about that article for years until last night, when I found myself at Club Rebel for the International Escort Awards, the “Hookies”, surrounded by people whose existences revolve around the two tasks on that list that I found the most daunting.

I didn’t seek the event out.  I was at a party with a group of people who were to be in the show, and they invited me along.  Anyone familiar with my work knows that I can’t pass up an opportunity to witness something unique; particularly when I have my camera in hand as I did last night after I went to see artist Charles Nitzberg at Leslie Lohman.

All images are licensed Creative Commons 3.0 attribution (please link back to the post).

Co-Host Sherry Vine with emcee Raven O.

In the dressing room: Award presenters Michael Musto, Michael Lucas and Rob Roth

Backstage with Junior Stellano, nominee for Best Pornstar Escort

Gio, winner of Best Boyfriend Fantasy.

Best Blogger/Writer nominee Jason Pitt (right) with friend.

Jason Pitt

Diesel Washington – winner, Best Blogger/Writer

Michael Lucas and Junior Stellano.

Ladyfag reads off the winner.

Raven O, the emcee

Gio wins his second award for the night, the coveted “Mr. International”

The talented Sherry Vine is everywhere in New York, and she is arguably the reigning Queen of the city’s nightlife.

How many times do we have to read that Rupert Everett blames his lackluster career on coming out as gay, when all evidence is that it’s because he’s a jerk?

As Neil Patrick Harris’s openly-gay star only seems to be on the rise to eclipse his Doogie Howser fame; as Cheyenne Jackson joins the cast of 30 Rock; as Ellen DeGeneres becomes a Cover Girl; and as Rosie O’Donnell shows no sign of gay celebrity fatigue, it seems lost on Rupert Everett that people don’t particularly care for him and the reasons have little to do with his sexuality.

Never mind that he upset a lot of people by writing a tell-all Hollywood book that was unflattering to those who considered him a friend.  Never mind that his plastic surgery foray was another example of botched movie star vanity.  And never mind that Everett never seems to get his story right.

For instance, after he tossed off his friend Madonna in the aforementioned gossip book, she wanted nothing to do with him.  What if your friend wrote these things about you:

His observation that she smells “vaguely of sweat”, to take one example. Or that, like all Hollywood’s alpha females, she’s something of a “she-man”. Or just possibly it was this bit that she didn’t care much for: “Just like America, everything about Madonna had changed. And what had happened had been carefully wrapped in psychological clingfilm and locked inside an interior fridge. Sometimes, in moments of stress, Madonna had power cuts and the old whiny barmaid came screaming out of the defrosting cold room.”

He wrote about how Guy Ritchie doesn’t like gays (not true), and that Madonna ditched her gay brother and gay friends to be with him.  He wrote about her celebrity spats.

And Rupert was shocked that she was upset.

Yet in February 2009, he told the New York Times magazine that he and Madonna were friends again.  Then just days ago he contradicts himself with The Guardian:

So has she forgiven you for that now?

“No.”

Really?

“Elephants don’t forget.”

Has she not forgiven you in a jokey way, or has she really not forgiven you?

“She doesn’t trust me any more.”

Oh dear! Although she’s probably not the only one. Everett’s memoir is entirely unlike the usual Hollywood memoir: he tells stories that aren’t always entirely flattering, about himself, about other people, about the way the star system works, which is fabulous for the reader, but perhaps less so for his subjects.

And Madonna read that and likely said, “There you go again, why don’t you just learn ‘no comment’ you twat?”  It’s not just his friendship with Madonna; Everett has stepped on pretty much everyone he has come in contact with:

Julia Roberts is “beautiful and tinged with madness”. When she gives him a lift on the Sony jet from Chicago, where they’re filming, to New York, he writes, “I witnessed the whole machine grind into action, the grandeur of Hollywood in transporting its livestock from A to B.” Sharon Stone he describes as a goddess, but it’s only when he starts rehearsals that “I realised something that had hitherto escaped me. She was utterly unhinged.”

In July 2009, Everett was fired from plum Vanity Fair after he called his boss Graydon Carter–whom I adore–fat and weird:

Who does one have to fuck to get OFF that masthead? He’s such a weird character, that [Vanity Fair Editor in Chief] Graydon [Carter]. He’s certainly not the buffoon he looks like. This is the most amazing thing I found out about him. I was once staying at a hotel and I was in the room directly under his. He is an amazing fuck. And you can quote me on this. The screams coming from the woman were some of the purest sounds of pleasure I’d ever heard. And there I was sitting alone in my room unfucked. Suddenly it all made sense. That messy hair of his that I always thought was buffoon hair was buffoon hair hiding a monster cock. The next day I went down to breakfast and Graydon came in and I thought to myself, well, now I understand why you are always acting so entitled and walking on air even though you’re rather fat. It’s because grazing the grass between your legs is this appendage of yours. I did rather politely tell him that morning that I thought he was a very good fuck.

So, Rupert, that is how you get the F-off the Vanity Fair masthead, and his friends said he needed the money.

Through all of this,  Rupert seems blissfully unaware that the problem is that he is an asshole and if you work with him, he’s going to slam and spill the beans about you.

In 1998, Everett was cited as an example of how being gay doesn’t prevent your star from rising.  After that was written, he starred in An Ideal Husband (for which he garnered multiple award nominations); Inspector Gadget; The Next Best Thing; Shreks II and III; The Chronicles of Narnia; and the St. Trinian´s films.

But if you ask Everett, he’ll tell you he’s being held back because he’s gay.:

“The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business,” Everett, 50, says. “It just doesn’t work and you’re going to hit a brick wall at some point. You’re going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign of failure they’ll cut you right off.  Honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out”

In April 2009 he told the Daily Beast pretty much the opposite thing:

But the reason my career is so up and down is that I get very little opportunity. There is just very little opportunity for a fag. That’s the reality. There isn’t. But I have no regrets for being out. None. It’s not like I’m missing out on that much.

Actually, it’s a surprise Everett made it as far as he did; after all, his ‘story’ is hardly the stuff leading men are made of:

Rupert did not last even two years at London’s Central School for Speech and Drama in his mid teens, being expelled for “insubordination” (an early sign of his fiery, independent spirit). As soon as he moved to London he began exploring his sexuality. At seventeen he joined the flamboyantly campy and avant garde Glasgow Citizens’ Company. Over the next few years (in the late 70s and early 80s) he worked in theater and modelling.

It was during this period that the boy born with the silver spoon started working as a prostitute, or “rent boy.”

What about developing a gay fan base?  Everett is a fail there, too.  Gays who want the same rights as everyone else are pathetic just because he wants to live a life “outside the mainstream” as he says:

“I mean, if you are meant to have babies then great. But this whole idea of two gay guys filling a cocktail shaker with their sperm and impregnating some grim lesbian and then it gets cut out is just really weird….  It has to change. These awful middle-class queens – which is what the gay movement has become – are so tiresome. It’s all Abercrombie & Fitch and strollers. Everybody has the right to do what they want to do, but still…”

So because Everett wants to be a freak, all gay people should want that, too.  In the same article, he insults the entire London theatre-going audience, which is essentially his own:

In London, the audience is like a bunch of old sluts who have had too much sex and can never cum. They’re mean and they dare you to entertain them.

Rupert, the problem is you have been so taken with your fame, and your fame-chasing; you are so taken with your rise that you’ve forgotten an element to being a successful actor is an air of mystery.  If you want to be a leading man, it’s one thing for you to be gay, but it’s another thing for you to continually talk about all the celebrities you are around, spilling their secrets and your private thoughts, telling the world about your prostitute days, tossing off your audience and gays who want families, and then expect men and women in an audience to suspend reality for two hours and picture you as the perfect leading man that they might like to see more of.

It doesn’t work that way.  Just don’t blame your crap career on anything other than your flawless ability to demonstrate to everyone that you’re a jerk who few people want to watch or get to know, Rupert.

Gore Vidal was at the Union Square Barnes & Noble to be interviewed by Leonard Lopate to discuss his life and his photographic memoir, Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare.  He was spectacular, although he did not raise the headlines that he did at the 92nd Street Y.  From New York magazine:

Accused anti-Semite Gore Vidal is scheduled to speak at the 92nd Street Y, and former mayor Ed Koch is convinced that “those who invited him are, as Jews, either most forgiving, or schmucks.”

In attendance was Susan Sarandon, whom I photographed at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, and Dick Cavett.  I also had shot Eva Amurri, Sarandon’s daughter.  After the event was over I introduced myself to Ms. Sarandon, and told her that the photograph at the top of her Wikipedia article is mine, and that it was a pleasure to have the opportunity to meet her.  The atmosphere at the book store was very relaxed.  There was a huge crowd and people were milling about to get out.  She looked at me and after a moment or two said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what ‘my Wikipedia article‘ is.  I don’t know what is Wikipedia.  But it’s a pleasure to meet you nonetheless.”  Then she returned to her friends.

Usually Wikipedia makes for a good ice-breaker, as it did with the aforementioned Ed Koch.  Not this time.

Then because of the way the crowd moved, Susan Sarandon was right behind me on all four escalators down.  Thankfully I was standing next to a pudgy Chatty Cathy of a man who had to talk about all the other times he had seen Gore Vidal. The moment I glanced at this guy in line he launched into Vidal lecture stories. I didn’t want Susan Sarandon behind me on the escalator to think, ‘Oh, shit, now I’ve got to talk to this Wiki whatever person four floors down.‘  I acted so into the conversation that I must have made the man’s night, but I don’t remember a thing he said except, “Gore looks on his last legs. I’ve seen him look better…”

At one point I glanced back and made eye contact and then quickly turned back around, just so she didn’t have to worry that maybe I hadn’t seen her; the introduction was pleasant and rewarding enough.

Nobody else noticed Susan, and where there was a pile-up beginning at the bottom of the escalator to the second floor because people wouldn’t move, it was Sarandon who called out, “Come on people, we have to move, this is dangerous.”  That’s a New Yorker, although I imagine the headline “Susan Sarandon Crushed in Tragic Bookstore Escalator Pile-Up” wasn’t an appealing thought to her, either.

Gore Vidal makes few public appearances now; below are Creative Commons photographs I released under the 3.0 attribution license that are now found on Wikipedia and my Flickr Creative Commons stream.

The bedroom may be a more private place, but when politicos insert themselves in ours, we’re going to be damn sure to set up a camera in theirs. – Queerty

One of the weakest defenses of keeping hypocritical gay politicians closeted was written up by Joshua Alston on Newsweek’s blog The Gaggle.  I expect to see the mainstream media try to maintain the status quo that the only thing the media should not report about is a person’s homosexuality, even when they wield their power to harm the civil rights of fellow LGBT people; however, I did not expect to find one so inarticulate and logically flawed.

Alston starts out reasonable enough in the post by framing Oscar-nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick’s documentary Outrage! in the light the film was intended to be judged:

Of all the confounding behaviors that human beings engage in, perhaps none is more irritating—or more common—than hypocrisy. It’s fascinating when someone condemns behavior while engaging in it himself…
[....]
In the film, director Kirby Dick builds the case that there are politicians who live their lives as gay men, or at least engage in gay sex, yet have voting records that undermine gay rights.

Exactly.  However, Alston’s shoddily thought-out piece switches midstream when he focuses on the argument against outing these people:

[T]he film’s core argument—that closeted gay politicians should be outed—is still at issue. The job of a public official, after all, is to represent his constituency, not to vote in the way that would most benefit him. We live in a democracy, and everyone gets a vote, including bigots and homophobes, and they get to be represented as well. Now, it’s fair to suggest that the voting public has the right to know everything about its elected officials, including their personal lives. But if we knew the details of what everyone was doing and voted accordingly, who would we have to vote for? Political scandals over the years, ones that have nothing to do with homosexuality, have proved that most politicians have skeletons they keep. If a gay man wants to run for governor of a socially conservative state because he has terrific ideas on how to reduce crime, balance the budget, or bring new jobs to his state, should he put his sexuality front and center and risk going down to defeat? There’s a valid argument for both sides of that question, but Outrage pretends there isn’t. If you’re gay, the film suggests, then fighting for gay rights must always be job one, and anything less is an unforgivable betrayal.

The film’s core argument is not that all closeted gay politicians should be outed, but only the ones who are actively hypocritical.  Alston starts off with the correct premise, but when he is forced to justify the last remaining media topic ban on public figures, he changes the argument.

Outrage! does not argue “that the voting public has the right to know everything about its elected officials”; but it does argue that hypocrites should be exposed, and that the media is failing in its duties to inform the public of what boils down to a question of character.  Welcome to that club, Joshua Alston.

One of my readers, Ryan, made these points on an earlier post over this topic:

If a prominent and powerful senator who was secretly Jewish but made a habit of introducing legislation and supporting measures which would limit or take away the rights of other Jews, would it really be unfair, in your opinion, to expose that senator as a Jew? Should other people (including Jewish people) just keep their mouths shut and allow that senator to keep moving ahead with his campaign of anti-semitism simply because the senator “has a right to his privacy?” Perinally I feel that my right to fight for my civil rights is more important than the “right to privacy” of any gay politician who is attempting to limit or take those rights away from me.

Using his flawed change-of-argument, Alston brings up the gay man with “terrific ideas” who won’t be elected in a conservative state because he is forced to declare his homosexuality, lest he be exposed.  Never mind this scenario has nothing to do with Outrage! and its premise; Alston passes over the real glaring deficiency: that someone with terrific ideas would be voted down simply for being gay.

This shows who Alston was pandering to: liberals who don’t feel people should be denied a job, or public service, because they are gay.  Under Alston’s logic, Ted Haggard would still be leading New Life Church and Larry Craig would still be a Senator; the public would be none-the-wiser.  Homophobes and bigots, who previously adored these people, would never be challenged to face the basis of their bigotry.

Alston’s understanding of democracy

It might be Alston’s misunderstanding of how democracy works.  He writes, “The job of a public official, after all, is to represent his constituency, not to vote in the way that would most benefit him.”  No, Joshua, the job of a public official is to vote his or her conscience, and the public puts that person in office not to be controlled by the shifting winds of poll numbers.  This is consistently a point of criticism against politicians.  Conservatives and liberals both make the point.

The public puts politicians in office to become far more educated on the issues than the public is able to be, and to vote accordingly.  Politicians aren’t elected to be puppets of their constituency, although to ignore them is to put their re-election at risk.

Democracy also works when the media does its job.  Alston’s post underscores the ultimate shame that he and others in the mainstream media engage in: not informing the public.  It’s a dereliction of their responsibilities.  People like Alston decide that hypocrisy is not worthwhile to report to voters–including gay ones–so that they can make an informed decision.  If liberal and conservative voters can agree on one thing, it’s that they don’t want to elect an anti-gay closeted politician.

The media decides this information is not worth your knowing, as they report on just about every other facet of a person’s private life.  Again, my reader Ryan:

[S]enators, congressmen and all other elected officials should be held to a certain standard and shouldn’t be exempt from close scrutiny. In fact, close scrutiny of politicians’ personal lives routinely occurs when it comes to heterosexual politicians. Their extr-marital affairs, drug use, domestic violence, drinking problems and all sorts of other “personal” things are fodder for the press already. Do you really want the press [to] treat all gay politicians so differently from the way they treat straight politicians?

Joshua Alston’s post is a defense that doesn’t judge the film Outrage! on its own merits; he judges it on the mainstream media’s double-standard.   That’s the real outrage.

Click here to watch the Outrage! film trailer.

Tonight I was watching the premiere of The Cleveland Show, the new Family Guy spin-off, and there was a joke in there about Gene Hackman being gay (because gays are smart and his gay smartness helped him memorize so many lines – lol).

I didn’t know much about Gene Hackman’s personal life, so I wondered if there was some Gerbil-esque rumors floating around.  There aren’t.  It was just a joke.  Hackman’s had fruitful marriages, according to Wikipedia:

Hackman’s first wife was Faye Maltese. They had three children, Christopher Allen, Elizabeth Jean, and Leslie Anne, but the couple divorced in 1986 after 30 years of marriage. In 1991, Hackman married Betsy Arakawa. They live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Betsy is co-owner of an upscale retail home-furnishing store in Santa Fe, called Pandora’s, Inc.

It’s funny how rumors start; I’m not often at the forefront of them.  This reference made just a few nights ago on a television show within a day had people demanding a Yahoo answer on Hackman’s sexuality; this blogger also was receiving these hits for a random post.   His only ‘gay moment’ was after a fender-bender:

The other driver got out of his car and into Hackman’s face. They exchanged heated words until the other driver used an anti-gay epithet. That’s when the 71-year-old actor slugged him, getting in a half-dozen blows before the Volvo passenger kneed him in the groin, dropping Hackman to the ground.

Gene Hackman: not gay.

MacFarlane’s humor is particularly biting satire on American society, and his insertion of this joke on Cleveland had to be designed to show how quickly, and easily, a rumor can spread about anyone, even butch, married Gene Hackman.  It could also be a mirthful poke at Hackman for reacting so violently when he was ostensibly called a fag.

If you, like me, searched for this information, consider yourself played.

This blog has taken part in outing two gay celebrities.  I was not the first, but  the second person to out Fox News anchor Shepard Smith; shortly thereafter, Academy Award-nominated director Kirby Dick became the third.  Dick’s explanation as to why he focused on Smith in his 2009 documentary Outrage! mirrors my own reasoning:

The film does report on one journalist, Shepard Smith, who was first reported on by Kevin Naff of the Washington Blade. Shepard Smith works for Fox News, which has been a major factor in the rise of anti-gay hysteria in this country over the past two decades. As one of the most prominent people in Fox News—according to the New York Times, Smith makes 7 to 8 million dollars per year—his complicity with the network’s homophobic agenda rises to a level of hypocrisy that I felt was worthy of reporting.

Although my stomach turns every time I see a FreeRepublic.com or eNationalist.com referral hit my Shepard Smith post, I still believe in the merits of outing him.

I know of many gay celebrities who are in the closet that I would not out because they are living their lives, harming nobody in the LGBT community.   Longtime blog readers may remember that I had a chance to out Clay Aiken, but refused despite “Claymates” demanding I reveal the gender of a “friend” I mentioned who was dating him about a year ago.

The same can’t be said for Smith, or Florida Governor Charlie Crist.

Word to the conservative closeted gays who make decisions that work against their own people: the LGBT community has no more patience for Roy Cohns.

The problem with my Smith post is that I wrote it out of anger over Fox News and their destructive, debased “news” that seemingly intelligent people actually believe is fair and balanced.  Writing in anger is cathartic, but it detracts from the message.  I was in Tel Aviv photographing for the Creative Commons, and my hotel only carried Fox News (“We see them as the most pro-Israel,” my guide told me).  Every day for a week I had to watch them to find out what was happening in the U.S.

Forced to watch Fox, outing Shep to the legions of fans of their slanted reporting was the only thing I could think to do.  They are being fed their news by a gay guy.  And there are a lot of gays who work at News Corp.

In October 2007, I interviewed one of the most impassioned defenders of outing celebrities, Michael Musto, who writes a popular column for the Village Voice.  In the 1990′s, Musto outed two of the most famous openly-gay celebrities today: Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres.  Here was our exchange over the subject:

DS: What stands out as a story that you did where you were bowled over by the reaction to it.

MM: In the 1990s I was one of the few people outing celebrities—

DS: —You outed Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen Degeneres—

MM: —I outed Rosie and Ellen, and it’s hard to even imagine now that they ever were in the closet. You have to educate the new people and say, ‘Guess what, they were in the closet at one point.’ It’s hard to believe that Rosie was doing this delicate dance on her talk show where she was the ‘Queen of Nice’ and the single mother who had a crush on Tom Cruise and I was pointing out the absurdity of it. I was even more angry at the media than people like Rosie, because the media would play along with it. They would do huge profiles of her without even addressing the fact that she was obviously a lesbian. I just spoke at Yale a couple of weeks ago and talked about outing, and nobody argued. I was like, ‘Come on! Somebody argue!’ I used to get so many arguments over this that I used to have a list printed out with an answer to each argument.

DS: Do you have a theory or philosophy you follow about outing?

MM: My theory is just that public figures sign an implicit deal with the media that their private lives are to be covered, and to leave out gayness because it is distasteful or there might be homophobes out there is homophobic in itself. It’s hypocritical and it makes ‘gay’ the last taboo. But I don’t get arguments anymore. I’m like, ‘Come on people! Yell at me!’

DS: What about the argument that it is more appropriate for people who are working against the gay community, a Larry Craig, if you will?

MM: People like Michaelangelo Signorile started by outing Malcolm Forbes, not anybody anti-gay. He was just saying ‘He’s dead, he’s gay, let’s say so in the obituary.’ I don’t believe in outing only the hypocrites and anti-gay people because then the only people the public is going to know are gay are horrible, hateful people.

DS: There are a lot of gay people who aren’t talked about in Hollywood now. Merv Griffin was an example. Do you not feel the need to spell it out for some people who lead very openly gay lives but that nobody talks about?

MM: Yeah, that was a big uproar after Merv died. Merv almost came out himself; was it Vanity Fair where he said ‘I’m quarter sexual, I’ll sleep with anybody for a quarter?’ or something? 99% of the obits didn’t even address it the fact that even Merv had almost coyly come out. So yeah, I wrote something to try and rectify that.

DS: But why not write something before he died?

MM: Please! I totally did. In the 90′s there was a group that put up those ‘Absolutely Queer: Jodi Foster’ and Merv Griffin posters? I ran the Jodi and Merv posters in my column. It was huge. I was really going places nobody was going; nobody was running pictures of those posters because everybody was so terrified of lawsuits.

DS: Did you ever come under editorial pressure over those?

MM: No, and the Voice staff at the time was very anti-outing, but nobody told me not to go there, and I’ve never been sued in my life and I’ve been here for 22 years.

Jean Coaxum, one of the staff members of Exodus Transitional Community, stands outside the Church of Living Hope in East Harlem with Jim McGreevey.

Former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, who riveted the nation when he came out as a gay American in 2004, is now the symbol of fallen Governors.  When Eliot Spitzer stepped down from the New York governorship in the midst of his own sex scandal, Spitzer and his wife were even charged with copying the McGreeveys’ fashion (it is uncanny).

The comparisons between Spitzer and McGreevey were apt, since they were both active Democratic politicians in neighboring states around the same time, both were frequently mentioned as strong Presidential contenders, and both of their sex scandals were seen as hubris personified.

With South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, whose Argentinian affair is not only hubris but also hypocrisy personified, McGreevey emerged again to offer advice that he should proceed with humility.

“I’m filled with a sense of pain and anguish for him and for his family,” McGreevey said in an interview. “I think it was a very human moment.”

Sanford is only one in a recent list of “Love Govs” who have admitted to affairs.  They include the aforementioned McGreevey and Spitzer; Jim Gibbons of Nevada; and David Paterson of New York.

I have known Jim McGreevey since 2007, when I photographed him as part of my public art project that Wikipedia hosts.  At the time I was attending Saint Bartholomew’s in Manhattan on one of my many failed quests to find spirituality.  St. Bart’s also happened to be where McGreevey, his partner Mark O’Donnell and his daughter Jacqueline attended service.  One day I approached him to ask if I could do his portrait.  He still possessed the boyish good looks and charm that were evident even at the height of his scandal.

However, he possessed more than that: he also displayed humility and an inner peace.  He is in a healthy, happy relationship with Mark as he studies to become an Episcopal priest.  He is giving back to others who have made mistakes, often because they were caught up in the circumstances of their lives.

Jim McGreevey and black Jesus at the Church of Living Hope in East Harlem. Click on the image to see more.

Gay people mostly forgave McGreevey for his affair when it came to light five years ago.  We are well aware of the many ludicrous situations that occur because men, particularly in McGreevey’s generation, have been forced to live their lives in the closet.  That he is living such an honorable and giving life freed from the shame of the closet is testament to the real Jim McGreevey.

McGreevey volunteers at Exodus MinistriesTransitional Community at the Church of Living Hope in East Harlem, New  York, which tries to help newly-released prisoners learn life skills and handle the significant challenges that ex-convicts face.   It’s not just job-hunting.  One of the photographs below shows Jim helping one young man figure out how to set up a free e-mail account on Yahoo.  With limited access to computers, the guy had no idea how to do this.  This is not atypical.  We take this kind of knowledge for granted, assuming everyone knows how to set up free e-mail.  They don’t.

The gifts that McGreevey brings to these formerly-incarcerated men and women are vast.  He still retains many of the contacts and friendships in government that he had when he was Governor, which has been a Godsend to a program that needs state assistance to function.   McGreevey knows  how the system works; he knows resources that are available to these people; and he is gifted with an ability to teach and reach them.

Many of these men and women don’t know who McGreevey is; they were not exactly following politics before their imprisonment.  Nevertheless, it was obvious that they sensed in Jim that he knows tremendous mistakes, and he knows how to overcome them.

Of course, the tabloids, the Mark Sanfords and the Larry Craigs of the world will probably never forgive him.  But who cares.  Certainly not the men in these photos below, who see the same McGreevey that I see, and not the caricature who exists in the pages of the press.

UPDATE:  The correct name is Exodus Transitional Community.  There is a Dallas-based group named Exodus Ministries that does prisoner rehabilitation as well (You may remember Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers served on the Dallas group’s board, which was mistakenly thought to be the ex-gay group Exodus International).  I was told they are affiliated with Dallas, but then later told that they are not.

Alvin Williams, one of Exodus’ intake counselors, talks to newly-released men about readjusting to life outside of prison, and the services that Exodus has to offer them.

McGreevey talks to the young men about life skills and how to re-engage society.

McGreevey and an Exodus counselor help a young man set up a free e-mail account.  Many of these people have challenges, such as lack of access to computers, that many of us can not fathom.

McGreevey stands in front of James de la Vega‘s East Harlem mural of legendary Nuyorican poet Pedro Pietri.

These images are licensed Creative Commons and are part of a public art project.  Click here to learn more.

If you thought Michael Lucas would land in New York City and stop his conquest of America there, you thought wrong.

The Soviet-born man the New Republic called “Gay Porn’s Neocon Kingpin” will appear in an upcoming episode of ABC’s Ugly Betty.

Will wonders never cease. I first met Lucas after he wrote Wikipedia about issues with his biography.   I am not into pornography nor had I written an adult article before, so I appreciated the new topic (I fixed some errors and in the process got stalked).

Lucas liked the idea behind my ceative commons photography project, and invited me to shoot a place he loves: Fire Island (click here for a few of the photographs).

Ugly Betty is filmed on location in New York City, which is where Lucas Entertainment is based.  According to Lucas’ PR, his will be the first appearance by a porn star in a major network prime-time show (excluding “reality” television).

On his blog, Lucas wrote the following:

How will ABC deal with a porn star on one of its prime time programs? I am curious to see how this will play out. Now, I am not suggesting that my little walk-on will change the world. But I hope it will be one step taking us out of the privacy of people’s bedrooms and onto a larger stage. And I hope the American public will enjoy seeing a porn star as a real person, not just as a hot body.

In 2002 I was at a bar called Hell in the Meatpacking District of New York City, which is where I met Shepard Smith.  At the time, Shep was just coming to terms with his sexuality, and we spent a good deal of time talking about what it means for him to be a gay man.  I’m not the first to report this.

Shep showed some interest in me–we were introduced via a mutual friend, an actor named Mark–but all we had was conversation.  I thought he was a nice guy.  I snapped photos of him and his female friend with the handkerchief on her head, whose name I have long forgotten.  I sent him those photos.

But as I watch Fox News, and the diatribes they air and the complete reaming of reality that they undertake daily that only serves to incite the worst in Americans, I wonder:  Shep – do you ever feel like you are selling yourself out completely just for your career?  When you said “it gets frightening sometimes” did you really mean it?  Your career is so developed that you could now hop to another network.  Why don’t you?  Why do you stay at a network that appeals to the worst in American society, and practices one of the most debased forms of infotainment?

At the time you and I met you at Hell, Shep, I was seeing someone and made that clear in our conversation; I would never have cheated.  But through the years, as I watch what Fox News does, I wonder if you and I had started to date–do you date, or do you just have one-night stands?–whether I would be okay with who you work for and what you do every night.  I don’t have an answer.

I imagine, Shep, that your career is fulfilling, but I also suspect that you go home every night and wonder what you are doing, and whether getting your face plastered all over the Rockefeller Center subway station and across America is worth it that you have found nobody with whom to build a life.  You are alone, and you are probably frustrated that your personal life is in the crapper because you have sold yourself out.

You’ve already made your name, Shep.  You just haven’t done anything with it beyond what every talking head does.  You could start by coming out, and exploring a side of who you are more openly so that you are no longer terrified that it will endanger your working life.  It won’t, and you’ve already banked your financial security.

Update: Why did I write this post?