Jay Leno on gay marriage, Jeff Whitty and more

Former Tonight Show host Jay Leno appeared last week at the Television Critics Association in Los Angeles to promote his upcoming takeover of the ten o'clock slot on NBC. I'm not exactly a fan of his humor (David Letterman more my style) but during the panel Jay was very quick and funny. Later I had an unexpected chance to chat with him.

I was curious if his experiences with playwright Jeff Whitty (who criticized Leno for his gay jokes including those about Brokeback Mountain) as well as the backlash about asking Ryan Phillippe to make his "gay face", was going to change his approach to gay jokes on his gig The Jay Leno Show. 

But it turned out that Leno was more interested in talking about the past. 

AfterElton.com: I know in the past you've had controversy about gay issues but—
Jay Leno: What's odd about this is that we've always supported. We've never done a joke about gay rights. I was one of the first celebrities to show up at the gay marriage thing, and went on TV publicly. The jokes we do are always about culture or dress, never about rights. Whenever we have Melissa Etheridge or anybody like that, we'd ask, "How's your partner doing?" and we talk about it this way. If there was a joke, a gay oriented joke, it was always about fashion or something. It's not that kind of joke. I was amazed when that playwright, what's his name?

AE: Jeff Whitty.
JL: Yeah. I couldn't quite get that. I did a little investigating and apparently he'd auditioned for the show, and I guess they passed on him. I thought it was really unfair. I spoke to him and said, "What's this all about? Does this really sound like gay-baiting, or anti-gay?" I just didn't get it. He seemed overly angry to me.

AE: Has your thinking on gay jokes, has your approach to it changed over time?
JL: Yeah! We live in a different time. You can only live in the time you live in. I think it's fair to say that over the course of the years, everyone has done jokes that were inappropriate, but in the time of Obama ... You know, I think it's one of the reasons Bruno didn't do as well as people thought it would, because people go, "We don't really think of gay people like that anymore." It just doesn't...

I think it's okay to do jokes and this type of thing, but you learn where to draw the line. I think it's ridiculous that gays aren't allowed to serve in the military, that they're not allowed to get married. I think it's a human rights issue. I think people sound like Klan members when they say they're against gay marriage. I've been married 29 years. How is my marriage threatened if you marry another guy? "Well, that's it, honey. We're over because this guy I just met..." I just don't get it.

I honestly felt like Jeff blew it way out of proportion. I had Ryan Phillippe on and he said he played a gay man, and I said, "Give me that look." I've said to other males stars like Antonio Banderas, "Show me that sexy look you give when you're trying to hit on a woman." And they make a face, and that's obviously where I was going with it. When it sort of backfired in my face, I didn't mind apologizing. That's not what I meant at all.

This is a big time show. We have a lot of gay employees on the show. Some are married, some aren't. It just seemed a little unfair. And I say that to you as a representative of a gay magazine, and I don't mean to whine and complain about it, because I did apologize, and I realize it was wrong, but to keep beating on it just seemed a little unfair to me.