It's also well known BB has a very conservative social agenda and for a long time resisted stocking many foreign and sub-culture films.

The Blockbuster in tiny San Marcos, Texas has one of the best stocked selection of gay movies I've seen outside of a gay bookstore (I'm not talking about porn, of course). I can think off the top of my head of at least one Blockbuster in Houston that also has a very good collection with a lot of obscure movies gays might not have heard of, but chancing upon would enjoy watching very much. And stocked in various genres: Drama, Comedy, Documentary, Foreign. All very well displayed so that you'd see them if you gave the stores the slightest perusal.

Also, your American Pie story is really weird. There is a pie scene in both the rated and unrated versions. The unrated is raunchier. Both versions have been available (with multiple copies) in every Blockbuster I've ever been in.

Over and over I hear how "lewd" Craig's behavior was, that gays don't "generally" do this, etc. It's probably best not to talk about what gays do "generally," as we are a wide variety of men and women often living radically different lives from one another. But, geez, have none of you read Edmund White, or Dancer From the Dance, or watched Queer as Folk. Or, I don't know, talked to any of your gay friends? Yes, there are happy, monogomous, sex-in-the-bedroom-only gays. But there are a lot of gays who do not fit this profile. This white bread characterization of the gay community (for political purposes, I suppose) is a bigger hypocrisy than what Craig was up to.

It was not in their nature or ideology to be open and truly market based, without censorship. It was in their executive natiure to influence and censor and use monopolist tactics to promote thier personal ideology, conservatism, and religion.

Based on what? They were always up front about NC-17 movies. I know because I was already renting from them when the MPAA created that rating. It's standard policy for the company, and who hasn't known that from the time these movies started being released?

It's fair to assume that given a chance they will revert to censorship and monopolistic practices, and that as a competitor they will continue to remain behind the curve in the total sum of their practices. As is also the case with WALMART despite efforts o be a bit more green.

When your first line of reasoning goes, so does the second. Actually, if they are willing to change policy (if that's what they're doing by having a much better gay video selection: it's your argument, not mine) to make better profits, it suggests profits are their highest concern. In which case, if their sales continue to improve, they could as reasonably be expected to increase the amount of "uncensored," "adult," "niche," whatever you want to call it, material they stock. That would be the more logical inference.

Personally, I don't see any dangerous right wing conspiracy here. They intentionally marketed themselves as a family company. Not surprising considering that porn started the video store boom, and back then many average rental shops contained a selection. That turned off a sizable amount of people (maybe not you, not me, not Salon readers, but still). So they decided no porn. And stickers on movies with what could be considered (by parents, of course) adult content. And between rated and unrated versions of movies, going with the former. Considering when they came into the industry, and how strongly customers responded to their choices, their decision makes sense.

That's why it's a good thing to, um, shop at more than one store. As I've already suggested.

I said something similar to this (well, I didn't so far as to say "bathroom sex is hot") in one of the Craig treads on this site; there are so many, I'm not sure which.

Anyone who has watched more than a couple of gay movies or television shows (even straight-laced, uptight David Fisher on Six Feet Under got an STD when he let a prostitute screw him in a parking garage), read one or two gay novels, or encountered just about any gay porn knows about tea room sex. And let's not forget major celebrity stories, like the recurring adventures of George Michael, also mentioned here. It's pretty widely known, and generally not derided.

But I guess, you know, this time it's a conservative who got caught. And people want to sling mud at the Republican. But they don't want to seem like gay-bashers. So they want to pretend there are "gays": out and proud, well-scrubbed, innocuous, just-in-the-bedroom sububanites, Ozzie and Harriet except it's Ozzie and Ozzie or Harriet and Harriet, you know healthy. And then there are "corrupt closet cases": lying, sleazy, dirty old men leading the lives Tennessee Williams and John Gielgud (is that bad company?) were resigned to in the bad old days, you know, sickos.

Trouble is, it's a false analogy. Some guys like annonymous sex. They are pretty healthy and decent, though that kills the stereotype (hurrah!). And there are some good, decent guys who are still in the closet. Sometimes because they are young, sometimes because they just have a lot of baggage in their lives.

Sure, there are some gays who fit that squeaky-clean suburban profile I mentioned. Though I suspect some of those Ozzies are slipping into a stall or a bathhouse or hooking up online with a stranger, or something else, on occasion. I also suspect some of them are as close-minded and judgemental and hypocritical as Craig has been made out to be, and perhaps is: they are only one part of the culture.

Read the column Savage Love sometime, please.

Do we have to be in such denial? Do we have to be so self-righteous?

I can't wait for Camille Paglia's next column.