June 30, 2000 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

on the airoff the press

Sinead O'Connor comes out, then edges back a bit

by John Graves

Pop star Sinead O'Connor has just come out as a lesbian-sort of. The Irish-born singer who made headlines when she tore up a picture of the pope on NBC's Saturday Night Live in 1992, made the headlines again June 2 when she told the lesbian magazine Curve that she was, and always has been, a lesbian.

A few days later however, O'Connor backed off a bit (why do they always seem to do this?) in a follow-up interview for the mainstream Us Weekly magazine.

"I don't believe there's any such thing as gay or straight," O'Connor told Us. "I wouldn't necessarily choose either a man or a woman, I would be attracted equally to either."

O'Connor, a mother of two, was ordained as a priest over a year ago in the breakaway ultraconservative Latin Tridentine order which was founded in 1978 in reaction to the Vatican II changes in the Mass. She told Us, "Right now I am choosing celibacy. I want to conduct a relationship with the spirit world, which helps my priesthood, and that's more important to me than going out with anyone, man or woman." This is O'Connor's second attempt at celibacy, her first attempt lasted about three months.

"What [celibacy] has done is take the focus off my sexuality as having to be something that is there to attract lovers. Therefore I can be sexy and beautiful for God or just for me.

Although the Tridentines have changed her, O'Connor said that she has changed the ultraconservative order herself. "I haven't become some kind of right wing person, my presence has liberalized them considerably. They are a bunch of very sweet old men who

have lived very hard lives being celibate Catholic priests, but they've become very fond of me and therefore of what I represent. Their minds are now more open to things that they wouldn't have been open to before, like homosexuality or a bit of weed smoking here or there. I'm forging new territory in a lot of ways.

"That I am a woman and a priest means that I'm breaking all the rules," she added. Her coming-out interview will be in the July issue of Curve.

TV to watch out for

There's a gay high school student on the new NBC sitcom MYOB airing Tuesdays at 9:30 pm.

The new cable sitcom Strip Mall, airing on Comedy Central Sundays at 10:30 pm, includes a lesbian couple running a Chinese restaurant.

A housewife and her new sister-in-law fall in love and leave their husbands in Fire, a beautifully told lesbian romance set in India now airing on Cinemax.

Look for a special report on the coming out of Ellen DeGeneres now airing on the Bravo channel's celebrity biography show Profiles.

Comfortably out of the closet now, Malcolm will explore the dating scene on the new season of Beggars and Choosers, which debuted on Showtime this past week. Same-sex smooch wins 'Best Kiss'

Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar kissed on stage as they received the award for "Best Kiss" at this year's MTV Movie Awards for their same-sex kissing scene in the film Cruel Intentions.

"My mother is going to be so proud of

this," Gellar remarked after receiving the award. Blair thanked Gellar for of the "long hours of practice."

'Fire Island' series begins

Bravo has begun airing Fire Island, a new, four-part documentary series about several gay men who rent a luxurious oceanside home on the famous vacation spot.

Eminem thinks he's not anti-gay

Asked to explain the extremely homophobic lyrics on his latest release, The Marshall Mathers LP, rapper Eminem told MTV audiences that those lyrics were not meant to be anti-gay.

"Faggot, to me, just means taking away your manhood," Eminem said. "You're a sissy. You're a coward. That's the way that word was always taught to me."

"That's supposed to make me feel better?" said Scott Seomin of GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, who has been trying unsuccessfully to arrange a meeting with Eminem.

rivals. We're doing two completely different things, and a lot of what she does isn't appropriate for my audience. I think there's room for everyone."

Given enough encouragement, however, Lowell will twit Stewart for projects that are unrealistic and too expensive for most viewers even to contemplate.

"I mean, she did a segment on beekeeping, and that costs something like $10,000 even to start," Lowell told the Post Dispatch.

The Christopher Lowell Show, which is taped in an eight-room house at Universal Studios in Los Angeles which Lowell says is located "right between the Psycho house and the Leave It to Beaver house," can be on the Discovery channel weekdays at noon.

The fashion secret police

Recalling Saturday Night Live's“Ambiguously Gay Duo," Agent 1 and Agent 2 are fashion spies who clash with perpetrators of trashy trends on the new animated series Spy Groove, which debuted on MTV last week.

Gay designer beats Julia and Martha Definitely maybe

Openly gay interior designer Christopher Lowell beat out such well-known figures as Julia Child, Jacques Pepin and Martha Stewart to win a Daytime Emmy as best host of a service program. Lowell told the "Post Dispatch",

"We'll be where Martha is-no, we'll be stronger than she is a year from now," Lowell told the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

Although he might gently slam his rival Martha Stewart for projects that are unrealistic and too expensive for most viewers even to contemplate, Lowell said, "We're not really

VH-1's Behind the Music examined the life, career and "those gay rumors" about Latin music star Ricky Martin a few weeks ago and Martin unequivocally confirmed that he will be ambiguous about his sexual orientation.

John Graves is the producer and host of Gaywaves, an LGBT public affairs show on Cleveland's WRUW 91.1 FM Fridays at 7 pm, and at http://radio.cwru.edu. Dave Haskell, Jim McGrattan and Kim Jones also contribute to this column.

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