Tastefully Gay.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Increase in 'gay vague' advertising - Brief Article

The Gay '90s are so over. Welcome to the Vaguely Gay 2000s.

A recent New York Times House and Home article, "When Intentions Fall Between the Lines," deconstructed several cutting-edge ads typifying the new ad coinage "gay vague." An ad for a swivel-top trash can that says "Swings Both Ways" is cited as a bold example of the genre. Waterford Wedgwood swings both ways with a generic image of two men and a woman strolling with champagne flutes. In gay publications, the version runs with the line, "It's time your crystal came out of the closet as well," superimposed over the picture. Another ad features two white, fit, smug men sitting on a white sofa with a cherub on a child-size chair between them. Straight audiences are meant to be confused but intrigued about the triangulation, while gay consumers are meant to rise up as one, go out, and buy the sofa and child.

Gay vague ads target young gay bucks with big bucks who don't want to label themselves. The agencies call that label-less state "genderation inspecific." Even that is vague. It is really "orientation unspecific." (In Google-researching this article, I was unable to substantiate my hunch that bisexuals would be cheering the new gay vague.)

Vague as the ads are, they still can set some straight people off. Young conservative pundit Amy Holmes got quite steamed about a Subaru ad that reads: "It's not a choice. It's the way we're built." She opined that the ads make straight people out to be dolts. She felt the ad for the Lesbaru was not just a blatant pitch to the gay niche but was also selling the notion that the straight, urban world is an enemy of liberation. Hey, we're not the ones buying the Humvees.

For me, "gay vague" is more of an explanation of the unsettling feeling I've been having about my dear old gay movement. June used to be called Gay Liberation Month. After marathon, knock-down, drag-out committee fights, the words "Lesbian," "Bisexual," and "Transgender" were added. Then, because all those words took up too much space, it was abbreviated to GLBT, which made us sound like a sandwich. In the last two Junes, all those...