Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (July 03, 2009)

Never happy to leave things exactly as they are, we've decided to do just a little more rearranging on the goodship AfterElton. Starting this week, we're going to be announcing the winner of the Battle of the Network Gays as well as having voting for the Asshat Smackdown! in the BEST.GAY.WEEK.EVER!

I know the Asshat feature isn't everyone's cup of tea, so again, why not just head on to page four to see who won this week's gay crown?

Now on to this week's Asshat nominees!

1. Patricia Mauceri

Why? The One Life to Live actress objected when her minor character Carlotta Vega was to be tangentially involved in the upcoming Kish gay storyline. What did she object to? Having to kiss another woman? Nope. Storming the Vatican and bitchslapping the Pope for being homophobic? Nyet!

Mauceri was upset at the idea her character was to be accepting of her son Cristian's homosexuality (he wasn't actually gay, but she thought he was). Not only did the actress not believe her character would behave that way, but she also reportedly personally objected to being seen as pro-gay.

Personally, I suspect she worried she is too crappy an actress to convincingly play pro-gay. Just saying...

2) The Fort Worth Police Department

Why? In what can one only hope was an ugly coincidence, two Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission agents and six Fort Worth Police Department officers raided The Rainbow Lounge, a gay bar, on what just happened to be the 40th anniversary of Stonewall.

The whole thing went down when TABC agents were doing a check to make sure there were no drunk patrons, although why the police were along to simply issue citations has not been made clear. Police and bar patron reports conflict, but this is increasingly looking like a black eye for the department and the city. Not only is one patron — Chad Gibson — still in intensive care, but gay rights groups and city council members are demanding an investigation.

It's also interesting to note the The Rainbow Lounge had only been open for two weeks when the raid went down.

The police have already contradicted themselves in their own reports and on Tuesday police chief Jeff Halstead seemed to be trying out some sort of gay panic defense saying the officers had been "inappropriately touched" when they entered the bar and that "You're touched and advanced in certain ways by people inside the bar, that's offensive. I'm happy with the restraint used when they were contacted like that."

When asked about the cast on his right arm, Chief Halstead explained he had tried to get some nookie last night and his wife had reacted "appropriately" by breaking his arm.

Next page! An aging rocker and a writer round out this week's nominees!