The shame game.

Cinema historians will be thrilled to know there is finally an exit line to top Orson Welles's immortal "Rosebud ..." at the end of Citizen Kane. A few episodes ago on Law & Order--the original, not the one with the sex crimes--the blond ice-goddess prosecutor played by Elisabeth Rohm was fired (translation: Her character was written out). Since she'd been doing a pretty good job of putting bad guys away for the last few years, she was, naturally, puzzled at this turn of events. Finally, out of the blue, she asked, "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" And ... commercial.

You can imagine the shock and surprise this one little line dealt to hard-core Law & Order viewers. This woman they'd been inviting into their home for what seemed like a hundred years suddenly revealed a key facet of her personality as the door hit her fanny on the way out of town. And what a facet! Whoever puts pen to paper or pinkie to keyboard over at the eldest L&O had pulled off one of the great writer jokes of all time--inconsequential, almost good-humored--unlike, say, those nasty people at Dynasty who herded the entire cast to Moldavia, peppered them with bullets, and let the audience stew all summer wondering who had survived.

The writer in me was delighted. But then the inquiring gay person who shares a mind with the writer wanted to know more. Why hadn't the writers on L&O brought this facet of the prosecutor's character into play before? Was it really just a joke to send her off into reruns on TNT? Or had it been discussed and rejected? Traditionally, we know very little about the characters on L&O. Their backgrounds may be applied to the action with a very broad stroke--alcoholic, father of six, Navy widow. I don't recall "lesbian" ever being part of the mix. It made me even more curious--if the gorgeous blond prosecutor was being let go because she was a lesbian, wouldn't that be a ginger-peachy story line for the show to pursue? Why had she hidden her sexuality, which evidently her coworkers knew about? Was she ashamed? One little line and all these possibilities.

People keep secrets for all sorts of reasons. My favorite is from the ones who stay in the closet because they think their parents don't know, so they want to spare their feelings. Or they are worried that knowledge of their sexuality will negatively affect their parents' lives, and they don't want to be responsible for that.

Consider Essie Mac Washington Williams, the biracial daughter of the notorious segregationist U.S. senator Strom Thurmond, who knew who her father was, met hint several times, and yet never revealed her parentage because it might negatively affect the career of a man who was determined to keep her a second-class citizen in her own country. Now that he's dead and she is herself a senior citizen, she's written a book, but she doesn't bat an eyelash when she offers her defense on talk shows. She spent most of her life living in shame, and that was OK with Essie Mac. That's just the way it was.

Living in shame also seems to be OK with the Cheneys, that fun couple who have more to do with the way our country is run than people care to admit. Whenever mention is made of their lesbian daughter, they rush to hide behind a wall of shame. Polite people don't mention such things in public--do you hear us, John Kerry? If their daughter's sexuality didn't truly bother and shame them, they wouldn't care how many people called her a lesbian on TV. It would be a statement of fact, like that Joe Lieberman is a Jew or Prince Harry is a jerk--something unassailable and true since birth.

For all the Cheneys' talk of how proud they are, they're deeply ashamed. They cry like wounded banshees when Mary's sexuality comes up in any conversation. What wonderful role models they make for parents everywhere, these paragons of law and order.