An Advocate.com exclusive posted May 22, 2003 

OK, so when Fox offered me press credentials to attend the big climactic results show of the second season of American Idol, I figured I could write something funny for Advocate.com about fashion (season 1 finalist Christina Christian carried a small dog with her down the red carpet) or bad singing (did you hear season 2 finalist Rickey Smith butcher Earth, Wind & Fire during the medley? Ouch) or Paula Abdul (guess what, Miss Thing, I grew up wanting to be a critic). But all that got pushed aside after I stood up at the press conference after the show wrapped and asked runner-up Clay Aiken the big question: “A lot of your fan base thinks you’re gay. Any comment on that?�?/P>

 
Christina Christian and her dog

First, a little background for those who haven’t been watching the show. Aiken has gotten a great deal of press over the course of the show because of the big voice that emanates from his scrawny body. Throughout American Idol, Aiken has had his own Extreme Makeover, changing everything from his hair (fluffed out to cover up his car door ears) to the removal of his nerdy spectacles. While teen girls and middle-aged moms went all swoony for Aiken, the gaydars of queer viewers nationwide were going off. Loudly. Here’s a performer, we thought, who can’t open his mouth without littering the Idol stage with hairpins. The fluttering eyelids; the high-pitched chuckle; the angry-diva faces pulled whenever Simon Cowell criticized him; the hammy, Sam Harris-meets-Mandy Patinkin show-tune vocalizing—just about everything Clay does reads as gay. I’m not saying that I know whether he’s queer or not, but if he isn’t, he’s a very gay-acting heterosexual. 


Clay meets the press

My boyfriend talks about Aiken’s goal to become a special-needs teacher as one that screams out as a career track often pursued by gay men. And my boyfriend also points out that there’s a definite subset of closeted Christian males in their 20s (having been one himself) who have so successfully repressed their sexuality that they don’t even know that they’re really gay. And that brand of asexuality is also a hallmark of Aiken’s singing. For all his technical proficiency, there’s no feeling that he’s ever experienced the painful love he likes to sing about. There’s no heartbreak in that voice, and there’s certainly no sex. If there were really such a magazine as Non-Threatening Boy (a favorite of The Simpsons�?Lisa), Aiken would be the Crush of the Year. 


Jim Verraros and Ejay Day

So anyway, back to Wednesday’s American Idol finale and the press conference. After Clay told a gushing female reporter that he’s looking for a girl who’s “not too primped and permed and curled,�?I asked my question. 

He looked right at me. Then, without a word, he looked at another reporter and called on him. Mind you,up to this point almost no reporters had been called on—it was one of those yell-out-your-question-or-forget-it situations. But Clay was definitely not going to answer my question, not even to give me some “I love all my fans�?or “It doesn’t matter what people think, as long as they buy my album�?bromides. I got nothing from him. I got the brush-off. I got a freeze-out worthy of Joan Crawford. 


Ruben and Clay

The generous interpretation of this is that he thought I was from the National Enquirer or some other supermarket tabloid, out to dig up dirt. Because after all, we all know the worst thing you can say about someone is that they’re gay, right? And it’s not like American Idol is dying to have an openly gay singer on the show: The Advocate left a million messages about Jim Verraros on Fox publicity voice mail during his stint on the program, but he ultimately came out in this magazine only after Idol was over. So what if British Pop Idol winner Will Young’s album topped the U.K. charts after he came out of the closet? Homosexuality is a subject the Idol-makers would just as soon avoid, apparently. 

As to the not-so-generous interpretation of Aiken’s silence, I leave that for readers to figure out.

If anything my personal motto has always been:

"Diversity is our biggest strength; ignorance our greatest weakness."

Sorry again for any confusion my choice of wording intially caused......