Alien invasion.

You'd think a card-carrying member of several persecuted minorities--such as my own blond self--would have a soft spot in his heart for extraterrestrials. Far from home, in hostile terrain, maintaining a discreet distance while observing our ways and means. They're the ultimate outsiders. Even their name screams "Not from around here" and "Not like you and me." People who like them depict them as cuddly, curious, slow-moving, and soft. People who don't, paint them as vicious, reptilian, and cruel. It's just like dinosaurs, only there we have some real evidence to go on.

Well, I don't care what they look like. I've just washed my hands of the little buggers. This happened shortly after it was pointed out to me how homophobic extraterrestrials are. I'd never realized this before. I'd always thought, Oh, well, at least we don't have to worry about them. They'll spend centuries figuring out what straight people do before they even bother to start a discussion group about us. So I more or less put the frequent fliers out of my mind. But lately you can't escape them. The marriage of science fiction and conspiracy theory, which happens weekly on the The X-Files and almost daily on Geraldo, combined with all those big budget alien movies makes ETs impossible to

So the facts have to be faced. If they're out there, as so many people seem to think, it can't be good news. Because it is in the nature of explorers to conquer. Even the good old U.S. of A. went to the moon in peace, but we planted our flag there nonetheless. Nobody with enough intelligence and resources to make the gargantuan schlepp to this here sphere has gone to all that trouble just to poke around. Except--and here is the homophobic part--the aliens we keep hearing about.

No matter whom you listen to, what books you read, or what depictions you see, one fact leaps out. These little tourists seem inordinately fond of the rectal probe. They must have hovered over green Earth just long enough to decide that this is the Planet of the Bottoms. Sooner or later everyone I have ever heard relating a story about an encounter with an alien gets to the part where there's a hose with a shiny tip. Hours later the victim wakes up feeling sore and violated. You might expect this from the lizards, but It's a surprise when you hear that the little rubbery trolls with the big eyes also seem to be adept at hose duty. This never used to be a staple of alien encounters.

When I was a kid, nobody spoke of such things. You didn't see Michael Rennie shaving things up Patricia Neal or the other folks at his boarding house in The Day the Earth Stood Still This is a recent development in alien sightings. Maybe it's some sort of revenge for whatever we did at Roswell, N.M. Maybe the aliens have taken anal retention to new heights. It's too deep to fathom in one sitting. But it's not going Away.

The other night I watched the video of Independence Day with a political activist friend. We'd both seen the picture last year, but he wanted to show me homophobic he felt it was. No, it wasn't Harvey Fierstain that bothered him, And it wasn't Harry Connick Jr. kidding around with the macho fighter-pilot gay stuff. It was Randy Quaid, trunk with the alien-abduction story. A story all about a rectal probe. It scarred him, for life, although we were mercifully spared that visual.

When Quaid finally emerges as the hero of the movie, it is because he takes his weapon and penetrates the center of the mother ship just as the aliens penetrated him. The symbolism was lost on me the first time around. Of course, the alien stories that inform movies like Independence Day are inspired by "real-life" accounts of writers like Whitley Strieber (in Communion: A True Story) as well as by tortured souls of every stripe who wind up on TV spilling their guts to Gordon Elliott. Are all these people making up the same "worst possible thing that could happen to me" story? Isn't anal violation the time -honored worst thing that can happen to a man, the thing that only homosexuals do? Is it possible that alien-abduction lore--and the movies it influences--is Just another brick in that scaredy-cat homophobic wall we are trying to tear down? And couldn't the aliens get the information they want by putting a hose down your throat? Perhaps they haven't conquered the gag reflex. Gee, we've done that. Go home, already.