GAY-THEMED SITES PLAY IT STRAIGHT.

Byline: GREG HERNANDEZ

Staff Writer

When David Beckham finally started in a game for the Galaxy on Wednesday night, the event didn't just make the front pages of mainstream newspapers and sports Web sites. It also warranted the posting of a shirtless photo of the soccer star on Kenneth Walsh's gay-themed blog.

Walsh, a 40-year-old writer and editor living in New York, doesn't care that Beckham isn't gay. He knows that readers of Kennethinthe212.com enjoy looking at photos of male athletes such as Beckham, Brady Quinn, Jeremy Bloom and Andy Roddick.

"I'm sure there is some deep-rooted psychological reason that we are attracted to the guy that probably would have beat us up in high school," said Walsh, chuckling.

Jim Buzinski, CEO of Outsports.com, thinks it's simple: Men are men.

"When it comes to visuals in sports, gay men and straight men are very similar except for the genders that we look at," Buzinski said. "Men are more visual. So we are just doing what mainstream sites do but we are catering to our audiences. If you look at Sports Illustrated or ESPN magazines, they all have some kind of photo gallery of hot babes in sports, or cheerleaders of the week. In a sense, that is geared toward what their audience mostly is: heterosexual."

So on Outsports, the photo galleries feature male athletes since its audience skews toward gay men. Among the all-time Outsports favorites is Bloom, the Olympic skier and NFL player with movie-star looks and a muscular physique.

Bloom won the site's annual "King of the Hardwood" contest in 2004 and 2005. It runs the same time as the NCAAbasketball tournament and is similar in format, with 64 athletes ranked according to hotness. They are eliminated round by round until there is a winner.

"We did an interview with Bloom and he was flattered, but wanted to be thought of as more than a pretty face," Buzinski said.

Still, Bloom's Web site has a wide array of photos of the athlete and plenty of them feature him shirtless.

"He showed a lot of skin and was not bashful about it," Buzinski said. "That is what is happening right now with Brady Quinn. It's the guys who are well-known and the European and Australian athletes who tend to be less hung up. Beckham has said he is honored to be a big gay fan favorite. It's the guys who show off their body, are visible and in the public eye, who get the attention."

Adds Walsh: "I'm not sure which came first. If the gays liked them and they became exhibitionists, or the other way around."

When the popular gay-themed Website AfterElton.com compiled a list of 100 men who gays found to be the most aesthetically appealing, Beckham was the highest-ranked athlete on the list at No. 39.

Next was Roddick, America's top-ranked tennis player, at No. 58. He had caused quite a stir on the gay blogs when the magazine Men's Fitness featured him on its cover with digitally-enhanced biceps.

Others in the "Hot 100" were soccer's Cristiano Ronaldo (No. 71), Canadian diver Alexandre Despatie (No. 72), football's Quinn (No. 88), and Bloom (No. 90).

Walsh notes the athletes who are the object of gay affection usually are quick to profess their heterosexuality. No surprise, since no pro basketball, football or baseball player has ever come out of the closet during his playing career, and few have done so after retiring.

But few object to the Internet attention paid to them by gay men.

"Generally, once it is brought to their attention, they seem OK with it," Walsh said. "I don't know if it's part of the times we live in or if they happen to be cool people."

Buzinski had never had any complaints about his site's extensive photo galleries until earlier this year when Swiss triathlete Sebastien Gacond demanded his image be removed because he didn't want anyone to assume he was gay.

Gacond wrote: "I would like to remove it because it's a gay Web site. I've got absolutely nothing against gay people and the gay community but I don't want my name and image to be linked there as I'm not gay ... I've got a girlfriend!"

Buzinski said that was a first.

"All we do is post links from other publications of athletes competing," he said. "He objected simply because his link appeared on a gay Web site. That specifically bothered him."

In contrast, French decathlete Romain Barras, also straight, was flattered.

"It is lucky to have articles (about me) on the gay Web sites," the 27-year-old Barras said in an interview with the French gay blog "Because of the Boys." The blog had posted a bunch of photos, mostly shirtless, of Barras under the headline "Romain Barras: The body made in France."

"I visited the sites, I saw the photographs, the galleries," he told the blog. "I found it to be super flattering on these sites to be surrounded by very beautiful guys ... I always had affinities with the gay community. This is a world which does not shock me."

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Photo:

David Beckham walks off the field after the Galaxy played D.C. United on Aug. 9. Images of the star are popular on gay Web sites.

Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images

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