Gay Man

ANAHEIM HILLS, Calif. -- At a tender age, fraternal twins William and Michael Randall believed in the tooth fairy, in Santa Claus and even the Easter Bunny -- but not in God.After all, the other characters brought Christmas presents, chocolate eggs and money for teeth. If there was a God, they asked, where were the goodies to prove it?The twins' refusal to recite that part of the Boy Scout oath acknowledging a duty to God, and their subsequent expulsion from their Cub Scout pack, sparked a nationwide controversy in 1991.

BOSTON -- Not that I am worried about Rupert Everett's career. Anyone who can dance away with the kudos at "My Best Friend's Wedding" is bound to catch bouquets.The British actor was more than Julia Roberts' gay consolation prize for losing the man she loved in that film, more than a walker at a wedding. He was campy, sensitive, sensible and, by anybody's definition, a true friend. He was the best man in the movie.So no one is surprised that Mr. Everett has lined up two more star turns: one as a gay secret agent, another as a married man coming to terms with coming out. Nor is it any wonder that the gay actor is being cast as a gay character.

"The Celluloid Closet," which opens today at the Charles, is a fascinating account of how Hollywood has dealt with homosexuals and homosexuality through its history.And the answer is: generally, not so well.The movie has a lot of passion and information but lacks rigor: It features too much uninformed opinion, too much advocacy PTC disguised as analysis, and too many "experts" whose opinions are suspect.But it's compulsively watchable.Derived from the book of the same name by the late gay film critic Vito Russo, it tracks the film industry's treatment of gays through four distinct stages: the sissy, the villain, the suicide and the whole man or woman.

WILMINGTON, Del. -- In a cathedral hall turned ecclesiastical courtroom, nine purple-shirted Episcopal Church bishops began yesterday to consider whether a bishop who ordained a gay man as a deacon should become the first person in 72 years to be tried by the church as a heretic."

An Episcopal bishop will stand trial for heresy tomorrow in Wilmington, Del.In only the second such trial of a bishop in the more than 200-year history of the U.S. Episcopal Church, Bishop Walter Righter, 72, faces charges that he committed heresy in 1990 by knowingly ordaining a noncelibate gay man.Bishop Righter was an assistant bishop of Newark, N.J., when he ordained Barry Stopfel, a Maplewood, N.J., priest who now shares the rectory with his lover of...

St. Petersburg, Fla. -- UNTIL REP. Dick Armey referred to his colleague Barney Frank as "Barney Fag," I had a good impression of the new majority leader.Compared to the doctrinaire speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, Mr. Armey seemed a thoughtful if somewhat laconic sort, carefully choosing his words to convey his considered beliefs.Mr. Armey protested that his comment was merely a slip of the tongue, a mispronunciation requiring no "psychoanalysis aboutmy subliminal or about my Freudian predilections."

Baltimore homicide detectives are fanning out in the city's gay community showing mug shots of a suspect charged with killing a Montgomery County man in April.The suspect, Gary Ray Bowles, 32, is a transient believed to be from Alexandria, Va., authorities said.The FBI is seeking a serial killer in the slaying of a 72-year-old Savannah, Ga., man May 5 and the killing of a 37-year-old Hilliard, Fla., man May 19.Authorities said Mr. Bowles is wanted for questioning in two other cases: an April 11 slaying in Jacksonville, Fla., and a May 15 slaying in Daytona Beach, Fla., authorities said.

MIAMI -- For the first time in its history, the Immigration and Naturalization Service has recognized gays and lesbians as a distinct social group who are sometimes entitled to a haven in the United States.Earlier this week, an INS officer in San Francisco granted asylum to a Mexican man who said he was beaten, raped and extorted by police in his native country for only one reason: He was gay."As a gay man in Mexico, life was made intolerable for me," Jose Garcia said yesterday at a news conference in San Francisco.

THE QUEEN'S THROAT: OPERA, HOMOSEXUALITY AND THE MYSTERY OF DESIRE. By Wayne Koestenbaum. Poseidon Press. 271 pages. $12.WAYNE Koestenbaum, a professor of English at Yale University, openly describes himself as an "opera queen" -- a gay man who loves opera.His choice of subject is startling, however, only because he dispenses with the genteel fiction that opera's affinity to homosexuality is merely coincidental.On the contrary, Mr. Koestenbaum asserts, gay men are attracted to opera precisely because its extravagant displays of emotion and willfulness express a secret realm of feeling denied them in the straight world.

When actor/playwright David Drake returns to Baltimore tomorrow to sign copies of his newly published script, "The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me," he will have come full circle.Not only is the script the semi-autobiographical story of his coming of age as a gay man in Maryland, but before the New York premiere of "Larry Kramer" in 1992, Drake tried out parts of the one-man show at Towson State University and Maryland Art Place.Since then, the 30-year-old boyish-looking performer won one of off-Broadway's coveted Obie Awards for his performance in "Larry Kramer."