John Barrowman's racy comments upset gay fan, make headlines

An interesting piece ran over at the UK Gay.com website: it seems that gay actor John Barrowman (Torchwood) made some rather saucy remarks in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine, and that a gay fan wrote a letter to the editor complaining about the article's content. Among the points that upset the reader were Barrowman's references to his supposedly large endowment, comments about the men he works with (he makes references to their "bums" and such), and other suggestive talk. The reader identified himself as a gay fan and mourned the interview as playing into the conservative image of gay men as being oversexed, irresponsible citizens. I think you could probably say that the image of pretty much anyone in entertainment involves being oversexed and irresponsible, but I do see his point. The interesting bit is that when running a story on the controversy (if you could call a letter to the editor of a sci-fi fanzine a "controversy"), British newspaper The Sun declined to include the letter writer's reference to his own sexuality. Gay.com feels that The Sun has a poor track record in its depiction of gays, and feels that they deliberately left out the sexuality of the gay writer, as it would suggest to readers that there are gay people out there with more conservative moral views. Doctor Who Magazine editor Clayton Hickman brushed off the Sun story, saying that "it must have been a slow news day." First off, it's probably not appropriate for Barrowman to be giving interviews where he talks about who he thinks is hot or not, considering that he just had a civil union ceremony that was covered widely in the media -- if a straight actor were to go on about which costars he'd like to shtupp right after his wedding, he'd be considered a pig. Granted, this interview could have been given months or years ago and could just be coming out. The interview itself isn't available online, so it's hard to tell what the context for the admittedly strange comments might have been. And the Sun should clearly have included the fact that the man writing the letter of complaint was gay, as it's a rather important detail that this was not coming from a straight reader offended by Barrowman's sexuality, but from another gay man who disagreed with the way in which Barrowman was speaking in an interview with a magazine that is read frequently by young people. It does seem like an odd detail to leave out -- although if they had made a point of it being a gay reader, would they have been accused of highlighting infighting within the gay community? In the end, I think Hickman had it right -- it's not exactly news to begin with, and makes one wonder how it made its way into the Sun in the first place.