As we launch our series on top ten worst gay jobs, Susan and I realized that many of you may think that this is a work of fiction. No way.

These jobs are real and well-researched, exhaustively so. In fact, considering the weighty importance of this undertaking, we harnessed the collective wisdom and intelligence-gathering power of the Lesbian Wiccans, the International Conspiracy of Jewish Bankers and Communists and The Society of Surreptitious Sibilant Sissies of which Kenny is co-founder and current chair.

As the emails, audio flash drives and scribbled notes on used condom wrappers started to pour in we were easily able to discern the truly heinous and soul-crushing jobs. Without revealing too much about the private lives of the queer and closeted we can share a few bits of data. For example, there was this illegally-obtained audio sound bite from the bugged office of well-known Beverly Hills shrink: "Mr. Cruise, it's your money and if you want to spend the hour jumping up and down on the couch I'll just sit and wait." Then there was the email from a reparative massage therapist hacked from the American Society of Evangelical Ministers server: "Ted is doing extremely well. While he is still drawn to prostitutes, he is now asking for females. During our last session he slipped me $100 and asked for Amber Vial." And this from Larry Craig's stolen medical files: "This is the first time I've diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome in an ankle."

Written by Jonathon Scott Feit
For WITH THIS RING Magazine

I'm writing to you from Las Vegas, home of the 2007 American Association of Advertising Agencies Media Conference and Trade Show. The last panel I sat in was called "The Business Case for Diversity in Media." Half the audience walked out. I didn't, but only because I was practically catatonic, imbued alternately with disbelief and dismay.

Granted, the AAAA meant well by having a diversity panel -- as my colleague Jack Myers, editor/publisher of the Jack Myers Media Business Report has said, it's better to shoot for diversity (even if one falls short) than not to discuss the topic at all.

But diversity has been rhetoricized ad nauseam at media and advertising industry events over the past two years, and advances are slowly being made. The problem, therefore, is not the concept: no member of the so-called "liberal media" -- nor anyone with a prayer to stay in mainstream business -- would decry the happy goal of diversity.

However -- and this is a big "however" -- two black men, one black woman, and one Hispanic woman do not a panel on "Diversity" make. Diversity does not, and cannot, simply mean mashing together persons of color, whose experiences, while varied in their own right, far from encompass the broadest range of experiences.

Where were representatives from the GLBT community, the disabled community, the Asian community, the immigrant community, the senior community, the youth community--or hey, here's an interesting one---the white community?

(How exactly did "diverse" become synonymous with "not white"?)

This week's' New Yorker includes Jane Mayer's piece on 24 and torture. If I don't always agree with her POV it's a good read, if hinky. Girlfriend refers to L. Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council (he of Nipplegate) as non-partisan and better yet writes that right-wing Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter with bodyfat," has cited 24's show's popularity as proof that Americans favor brutality: " They love Jack Bauer," she noted on Fox News. "





Let's use that same logic to suggest that Brokeback Mountain is a referendum on gay marriage, and with Ellen's gig as Oscar MC as Exhibit A, that the culture wars are over, and that we've won.