Have you ever wondered about the rampant gayface you see on professional homophobes?

Take a look at this gallery of “manly” faces — the simpering Gary Bauer, the Golly Gee eyed Peter LaBarbera, the pudding-faced Robert Knight — all of them spokesman for organizations that freak out regularly over gay civil rights — the so-called “gay agenda.”

In point of fact, it is these spokesman for Christian-front organizations with names like Americans for the Truth about Homosexuality (a one-man operation by nutjob LaBarbera) and Concerned Women for America (odd isn’t it, for a man — pudgy-wudgy Robert Knight — to be the head of a woman-specific organization)… it is these Concerned Morons for Homophobia that have the agenda — a theocratic one.

But that’s not all they have. These Prisoners of the Inappropriate Gayface also possess an oddly fine tuned gaydar that goes off — in full, flaming four-alarm mode — at the first breath of a whisper, at the teeniest hint of gender “confusion” in Barbie dolls, at the “blatant gay militancy” to be found on the cardboard cups at Starbucks , at the softest rustling in the bushes … (read the full article)

1. Turn Your Fetish for Rigid Members Into the Toast of Manhattan

Robert Mapplethorpe combined the shock effect of hardcore S&M porn with the fashion lighting and stagey compositions of George Platt Lynes, a photographer of artistic male nudes from the 40’s and, in many ways, Mapplethorpe’s gay herald.

But where Lynes had concentrated on elegant male forms, Mapplethorpe, an artist of the 70’s, focused on images of hard-ons, such as the monster cock at top. In his own way, Mapplethorpe’s boners were just as elegantly framed and fit in smoothly with the rest of his portfolio,vaguely glamorous shots of underground celebrities like Patti Smith, Grace Jones and Keith Haring. (read the full article)

Ah, frat boys. Consider the plight of young privileged males on the college campuses of America. More boy than man, these sturdy, somewhat elongated young stags are in the grips of what Tom Wolfe memorably called “the season of the rising sap.” Completely housebroken, of course, but pretending otherwise to impress their “Bros.”

Bros should not be confused with dudes. Bros are closer than dudes, but dudes can become Bros after some straight-boy ritual of male bonding like consecutive all-nighters playing Halo 3 and ordering out for Taco Bell or performing any of the American tribal stunts seen in the Jackass films — taking turns riding in a shopping cart, for instance, as it barrels down a hill into traffic, then putting the video up on YouTube or your Facebook page.

It’s the deep basso chuckle of collective Bro-dom that one hears in darkened movie theaters when the notice comes up before the Jackass films warning that the stunts they’re about to see are being performed by “professionals” and should not be attempted by the jackasses in the audience.

In a world where closet doors have swung open, guy-bonding must never be mistaken for gay-bonding. Thus the phenomenon of “the gay seat” — what the Bros call the empty seat that’s left between two friends who go to the movie together but who must never be confused with being together. To double insure this, the Bros are most likely to attend what they call “dick flicks” — movies characterized by car crashes, explosions and boobs — the very polar opposite of the romance-sappy “chick flick,” and peopled almost exclusively by other guys all separated by empty seats. (read the full article)

Macbeth in the buff — why hadn’t anybody thought of it before?

The idea was as natural as …well, as Mickey Rooney turning to Judy Garland and bubbling “I know! Let’s set Shakespeare to music!” And Judy bubbling back “But lets do it in Swing!”

When a theater company in Arlington, Virginia decided to put on a Macbeth for the 21st Century, director Jose Carrasquillo wanted something tribal and violent, something suggestive of “an animal-like clan and society.”

“Twenty minutes,” decided the critic for the Washington City Paper. “That’s about how long it takes to get used to the nudity in José Carrasquillo’s eerie, intelligent, and visually arresting Macbeth.”

A tad more skittish about the balls-out production, with its cast of mostly male actors (give or take a few witches), was the reviewer for the A.P. wire service: “Folks in the front sometimes cringe and move back a few rows during intermission,” the scribe reported sheepishly. “One man watched the play with a programme in front of his eyes, blocking out the lower half of his field of vision.” (Awwwww, the poor fragile darling. What? Were all the showings of Evening sold out?) (read the full article)

By Zeus, Dick rules the heavens!

Yes, several sightings of the Celestial Phallus have made the news this month.

Certainly you’ve heard of, if not been visited by, the miraculous Divine Penis.

That Wing-ed Divinity, its proud erection and stiff little winglets so like those of the Christian dove or the Rococo cherub (its later appropriations) was beloved of the Ancients — and is still worshiped by many a Modern today, hey boys?

1. Down from Mount Olympus

First up this month was the rebirth of Zeus, Apollo and all the gang in the annual party dance-show Broadway Bares, a charity event to benefit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.

This year the theme was Myth-Behavior and so laurel wreathes and just a hint of toga, no more than a few shipwrecked shreds, covered Broadway’s most sensational boys and girls of the chorus. Everywhere gods, demi-god and just plain hunkeroonies stripped down to their raw, near-naked talent, in obedience to those tenets so oft repeated on Inside the Actors Studio, peel away the layers, serve the character. Yes, boys and girls, Art was in her temple.

Featured was a jaw-droppingly salacious number, Heroes, in which a roll call of the major Greco-Roman beefcake came to life (Hercules, Odysseus, Adonis) and went against humpy reimaginings of the Minotaur, the Cyclops and a campy Harpy played by a comic actor.

Our favorite moment: the Sirens, appearing in all their Neptunal, sea-weedy weirdness, singing — this, the genius touch — the theme from Love Boat (”Aw-hhh, Love. Exciting and new. Come aboard. We’re expecting you…)

In addition was the annual Stripathon, right, which needed no theme more eternal than cowboy hat, boots and a jockstrap. (More Myth-Behavior photos and details )

This year’s show was so successful (a record-breaking $740,000 haul) that Variety reports talks are now ongoing with an unnamed Las Vegas casino to bring the show permanently to the Strip, rebaptised for a less New York-centric audience, Peep Show. (read the full article)

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Keep the pecker in the pants – or hire a bodyguard. That’s the moral of this Washington tale.

We begin with an Ode to the Imperiled Penis by one of our favorite wags, Vanity Fair editor James Wolcott

“You know, a penis is more than a phallic symbol made flesh,” rhapsodizes Wolcott. “It’s a warm, life-sized attachment that serves a number of utilitarian purposes, too, and over time develops its own wry personality and quirks, or so it can seem to its owner.

“Hence I suspect a lot of men will wince in sympathy at the prospect of the firm yet tender bond between Senator David Vitter and his penis being rudely severed by his vengeful wife. Nothing sends a shudder through the locker room faster than the bladed gleam of castration.”

Thus begins Wolcott’s hilarious meditation on the latest vice scandal to rock the Republican side of the aisle in Washington. Of course you’ve heard by now of Louisiana Senator David Vitter, charter member of the Bedroom Police and Defender of Marriage from Homosexuals, who was caught with his pants down.

Everyone with a TV has seen his boyish, if somewhat overfed, carb-face mouthing meas-culpas after his name turned up in a D.C. madame’s phone log, as well as on the client list of several New Orleans’ joy girls. And you also saw his wife standing beside him, looking mildly insane, like a starey-eyed Allison Janney, in that honky-tonk what-the-fuck-was-she-thinking jungle-print dress (shouldn’t they both have been in sack and ashes?) (read the full article)