“It's against the law to be vaguely gay?” Dan Rydell asks his colleague Mallory on Aaron Sorkin's 1998 sitcom Sports Night, when she tells him that his “vaguely gay” habit of singing "Happy Birthday" to his male friend Casey live on television is illegal. Turns out, it's singing "Happy Birthday" in breach of copyright that is against the law, but Dan has raised an interesting point.

Is it unfair for men in the public eye to deliberately signal that they might be gay if they're not prepared to follow through by actually coming out?

Over the past thirty years, a small but significant number of male celebrities--from David Bowie to Morrissey to Jared Leo--have played the queer card without ever explicitly and permanently confirming themselves as queer. They have made references in their works, dropped hints in interviews. Some have even stated that they are gay or bisexual, only to take it back later and say that it was never true, that they were joking.

Are celebrities who do this unfairly exploiting homophobia or merely exercising their right to freedom of expression?

Perhaps they are helping to reduce homophobia by being prepared to at least to flirt with the idea of homosexuality, rather than just running away from it in horror. Perhaps they are also providing some much-needed representation for those who feel that their sexuality is too complex and fluid to be contained by a permanent label. In repeatedly switching their signals from gay to bisexual to straight and back again, they are cutting against the whole system of rigid sexual boundaries and labels.

But others would argue that, in repeatedly hinting at gayness and proposing themselves for gay attention without being prepared to confirm their sexuality as queer, these men are being cruel and exploitative to their gay fans. After all, there are plenty of men who do unambiguously identify as gay, and they are in need of role models in a way which straight men are not.

Some fans believe that by repeatedly hinting (or momentarily claiming that they are) that they might be queer these celebrities are creating an expectation that should be fulfilled. If the celebrities are not prepared to fulfill that expectation by coming out in earnest, they believe, then they should not be creating the expectation in the first place.

The tradition of "gay vague" goes back to David Bowie. In a 1972 Melody Maker interview, he became the first rock star to declare “Yes, of course I'm gay, and always have been.” (He was married to a woman and had a baby son at the time). In a 1976 Playboy interview, he modified the claim to describe himself as bisexual, not gay. At the time, both his manner of dressing and his stage performances were suggestive of a queer, or at any rate androgynous, identity.

But his stage persona changed over time, becoming more conventionally masculine. He has since distanced himself from both the gay and the bisexual claim, and is now married for a second time to a woman (Somali-born model Iman).

Morrissey is a famous inheritor of the gay vague persona. From the early 1980's till today, he has danced around the issue of sexuality in interviews, giving oblique and sometimes contradictory answers. He's celibate. He's not celibate. He's attracted to women. He's attracted to men. He's attracted to both. He's not attracted to anyone.

His songs are similarly ambiguous. There are lyrics that use the male pronoun and could be taken as expressing gay desire. There are lyrics that could be taken as expressing straight desire. And there are lyrics that are gender neutral.

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