Trailer trash.

ELLEN IS STARING AT ME FROM THE COVER OF TIME, DRESSED just a little bit like a Heaven's Gate cult member, declaring, "Yep, I'm gay." And up in the comer the magazine is plugging another story: "The Backlash Against HOMOS." Jesus ... already? I look again. I've misread. It's "The Backlash Against HMOs." Whew. That was a close one.

Well, you can't blame me. These are exciting times for homosexuals as well as for insurance agents. Homosexual insurance agents must be dancing in place. Everywhere you turn you can hear the sounds of barriers crashing down as we flood our way into the mainstream. Classic foes like Jerry Falwell pipe up with the tired old "promoting the gay lifestyle" line, and nouveau pains in the ass like Camille Paglia even offer him some support. But the mass of straight Americans who have been exposed to us know we're more than a style--we're a life, albeit a life filled with extreme style.

Of course, it's easier to be gay in San Francisco than in Topeka, Kan., but with 24 gay characters on prime-time television and with as familiar and unthreatening a presence as Ellen DeGeneres gracing the cover of Time--shucks, it's got to be getting easier.

In such heady times--with everyone marching around holding his or her feathers up proudly--it's always a blow to find that dragons are lurking in waters we used to think safe. Just the other day in user-friendly West Hollywood, Calif., I ducked into the octoplex to play hooky at the movies. I settled into my seat, burrowed into my popcorn, and began to watch the endless series of previews without which no octoplex is complete. You probably haven't noticed, but the previews, known as "trailers" in the trade, are rated just like movies.

I'd never noticed this either because most trailers get G ratings, which means they can be shown with any movie you can throw at them. However, every now and again a trailer gets an R rating, which means it can be shown only with an R-rated movie. You'll notice these trailers because the rating is splashed across a screen that has been colored blood-red for the occasion. Such a warning flashed across the screen before a trailer for the film Chasing Amy.

This is a sweet little romantic comedy about a guy who falls for a girl and discovers that she's interested only in other girls. The trailer shows, for an instant, two girls kissing. There is no violence, no sex, no guns, no blood, no drug use, no torture, and no bad language in the trailer.

Other trailers shown before and after the Chasing Amy preview featured such clean family values as small children being threatened by dinosaurs, men being eaten by insect aliens, men with big guns blowing away other men with big guns, and lots of people screaming as the cars they are riding in head for Cliffs. These trailers were all rated G. Other than the lesbian kiss, there was nothing anyone could possibly object to in the trailer for Chasing Amy. Yet it--and only it--got the warning label.

I called a friend at the Motion Picture Association of America, which administers movie ratings; my friend said the organization never comments on the way it assigns ratings. Then I called a friend in the trailer business. She listened patiently and told me the material in the Chasing Amy trailer sounded MPAA-objectionable on "thematic" grounds. "This is an outfit that takes what it considers a `parent's-eye view,'" she said. "In the eyes of most parents, a lesbian kiss is something they don't want their kids to see when the kids have been parked at the matinee of 101 Dalmations. Giving the trailer an R rating ensures that it will not be shown with a G-rated picture. It's the only guarantee they have."

OK. I can understand the rating part, to keep objectionable things away from kids. What I can't understand is what they consider objectionable, especially in light of what they consider acceptable. Which parents are the MPAA representing? The ones on their way to the NRA picnic? Surely not the millions who watched 20/20's unbelievably positive coverage of Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher's new baby. Surely not the ones who are young enough to be giving birth. No one born in the '70s can be that square and unaware. Or can they? You mean we still have work to do? Ellen isn't enough? Help! Mommy!