“Gyllenhaal's not gay… and the gays all want him. They're done with Cruise, they've had it, he's too crazy…You know the gays are moody. You gotta keep up...” --Comedian Kathy Griffin on Larry King Live, July 11, 2006. “I understand why people think we're gay.There isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women … But for people to still be asking the question, when I've said it and said it and said it, that means they think I'm a liar. And that bothers me …All my stuff is out there. People think I'd be so ashamed of being gay that I wouldn't admit it? Oh, please.” --Oprah Winfrey, in the August 2006 issue of O Magazine, answering the rumors surrounding her relationship with her best friend, Gayle King.

With so many deliciously crazy homophobic folks for us to feast on, why do we continue to eat our own?

We've devoured all the gay rumors about Jake Gyllenhaal, Oprah Winfrey, Anderson Cooper, Jodie Foster, Kevin Spacey, Tom Cruise and others, and then licked our lips. Many of us in the gay and lesbian community--especially bloggers, many of whom operate under the motto, “We Speculate, You Decide”--have helped initiate and spread the sexual innuendo. But it's the gay media, we who pride ourselves on reporting facts not insinuations, who give credibility to the unsubstantiated by relaying it with an air of authenticity. Why?

Admiration for the famous? Disdain? Mere sexual attraction? The hunger for truth? Drama? Sure, I'll buy it all. But regardless of what Kathy Griffin thinks, it's not because we're moody.

We speculate for lots of reasons, not the least of which is because it's our job to observe and report. While most respectable journalists stop short of actually outing closeted celebrities, some of us pass the rumors on to readers because if we don't, the mainstream media or unreliable bloggers will, and they're apt to be even more insensitive than we can be.

But primarily we dish because we're selfish. The gay community is part of the human race and, just like everyone else, we're programmed to survive. But since we can't procreate in the sense that we can reproduce our own kind at whim or after a few pitchers of margaritas, we promulgate--we endure through declaration. And we proclaim with great pride.

Gay gossip columnist Perez Hilton, the man currently being credited with first “outing” Lance Bass, the gay community's newest member, in his column last September, reasoned it this way to Access Hollywood: “Being gay is not a death sentence for a performer in show business. We need to get out of that mind frame. It's 2006 people!”

Gossip columnists like Perez don't simply nod in agreement of the saying, “There's a little bit of truth to every rumor,” they chant it like a mantra. And they do that because they've seen (or know somebody, who knows somebody, who knows somebody, who's seen) a superstar of Tom Cruise's caliber, well, cruise--without a big boat.

“It upsets me that people think what I'm doing is a bad thing,” Perez said. “If you know something to be a fact, why not report it? Why is that still taboo?”

Those questions have turned editorial meetings into war zones for decades, and there are decent arguments on both sides of the table. On one hand, we don't like being lied to by our own kind. The lies translate to shame and there's nothing positive about feeling crappy about being gay. On the other, there's the issue of privacy. Coming out is a very personal choice. When the media outs stars, it's seen by some, yours truly included, as a direct hit below the belt.

But what about the rumors that we pass on, knowing full well they're probably not true? Why, for example do we continue to insinuate that Oprah Winfrey and Jake Gyllenhaal are gay when it's pretty clear they're not?

I've been thinking about this for some time, and aside from the obvious answer (celebrity gossip is fun!), I believe that when we give life to the notion that where there's same-sex smoke, there's a big gay fire, we plant seeds of possibility. And we hope that with a bit of nurturing they will take root and become trees that bear the fruit of full acceptance.

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