Hold the phone, geoffchaucer. If you didn't understand that gays are not the only ones having anonymous sex in bathrooms, you didn't read the piece carefully enough. Go back and read it again.

omalley: please note that the body of the piece does not "squeal" that bathroom sex is "hot"--just the headline. it's possible that the writer did not write the headline. in fact, i have inside information; i know that he didn't. the writer attempted to write a funny, thoughtful, and provocative piece about a controversial subject, and include a frequently ignored point. whoever referenced george chauncey's book "gay new york" is completely on the money as far as this article is concerned.

most of the political debates about gay rights oversimplify sexuality. the right yells "it's a behavior! you can change!" and the left says, "it's genetic, it's an identity!" when i suspect that it's really both. even if we discover that homosexuality is genetic, and (god forbid) the right succeeds promoting abortion only in the case of gay babies, gay sex will not perish from the earth. who then, will be doing it, i ask? as the writer says, the idea that homosexual acts are inseparable from homosexuality is SILLY. just look at all the "lesbians" in porn. or don't, because you probably find that disgusting, too.

I am the author of this article, and for the record, I'm black, despite a last name that conjures up images of Guinness pints, shamrocks, and red-haired people river-dancing. Why does no one give Terry McMillan such a hard time? Oddly, I don't know anyone named Hannaham who ISN'T black. Also, I didn't come up with the headline, and I didn't originally write the piece as a response to Gary Kamiya's essay. I just happened to write about the same thing and turn it in at the same time. The editors didn't know what Gary's piece was going to be about before he turned it in, but when this situation occurred, they suggested that I respond to his article before going live with both.

Author here: Dr Z: Nowhere did I say she "shouldn't" use the media for her personal gain. I may have implied that it's a dangerous game, because I actually do fear for stars who make the choice she has, but a hypocrite I am not. And if I may remind you, you don't know my life. "Pligger" indeed.

I'm not sure where you got the received idea that "most writers, poets, musicians (and comedians of all people) [are] a bit less than little Mary Sunshine in their private lives" but firstly, I assume that "a little bit less than little Mary Sunshine" doesn't mean "suicidal" or "hell bent on self-destruction" and secondly, it's clearly not the majority--just the talented tragic ones that get all the attention, and Winehouse can't be unaware of that.

I meant to say more in this piece about the high-functioning alcoholic/drug addict crazy pop star (Sly Stone, Keith Richards, Macy Gray) but there's only so much one can cover before trailing off into another subject in these articles. Furthermore, they go out fairly quickly and there's slim chance of making corrections, so I regret the implication that Sharon Jones' band are old fogies. Jones herself is an older-timer for sure, though. Also, I wish I had compared Winehouse to Tracey Ullman's pop career instead of Lauryn Hill's song; that would have been a much better example of pastiche.

Winehouse has a great voice. But her material is extremely derivative. I tried to avoid in this article making easy assumption that her music inauthentic because white folks can't play the blues, or can't get over in black music, because that's patently false. But sometimes in pop music it's hard to tell the difference between heavy influence and pastiche, so for balance perhaps I can provide a counterexample of a Motown-influenced white band whose music does not sound like pastiche: listen to the Spoon song "You Got Your Cherry Bomb." The Motown influence is apparent, but not *imitative*, as with Winehouse. The issue for me is not "who can play black music"--hell, Amy Winehouse sings more convincingly "black" than I, despite being a black American, ever will--but "who can play black music *convincingly.*" Her voice convinces me, no question. Her material and its production values, however, don't.

And to the guy who had a critical note for my bio--lay the f**k off already. That bio was originally for a piece about Larry Craig, and the freshness date on its relevance has admittedly passed long ago.

For the record, the comedian Paul Mooney also did a routine about Bill Clinton's alleged blackness, the mantra of which was "sounds like a brother to me"--in which he dissected all of BC's stereotypically black behavior, i.e., infidelity, love of soul food, etc. etc.