Viva las vagues.

Recently my eye was uncharacteristically drawn to the House and Home section of The New York Times. I generally flip past that section because the houses scare me. Where do they keep their tweezers? But this time I was stopped by a picture with two fancy tuxedoed men and one woman in a black cocktail dress walking through a manicured field, carrying champagne flutes and laugh-laugh-laughing, well, gaily. The copy line read, "It's time for your crystal to come out of the closet as well."

The accompanying article deconstructed this and other ads as examples of a cutting-edge genre called "Gay Vague." The line about the closet and the Waterford crystal oeuvre was cleverly used only in gay publications, which seems reverse to me. The ad for a swivel-top trash can, "Swings both ways," was parsed. Another furniture ad with two fit white men on opposite ends of a white couch with a cherubic child on a child-size chair in front of them was said to perplex straight audiences, who were confused by the triangulation, while it caused irresistible retail urges in gay audiences, who then rose up as one, went out, bought a couch and a child.

Gay Vague targets young gay bucks with big bucks who don't want to label themselves. The labelless state is dubbed "genderation inspecific." Even that is vague. It is really "orientation inspecific."

The Times article prompted a steamed column from Amy Holms on Voter.com. The Subaru ad "It's not a choice, it's the way we're built" was as offensive to her as elephant dung is to others. She opined that the ads make straight people out to be dolts.-She felt the ad for the Lesbaru was also selling the notion that the straight, urban world is an enemy of liberation. Hey, we are not the ones buying the Humvees.

When Robert Kennedy--no, not that one, the publisher of the upcoming magazine American Health and Fitness--wrote to potential advertisers that, unlike others, he would not use those "debauched, wet-lipped men" who "look like they can be seduced" on his muscle covers, he out-raged some gay activists and no doubt disappointed others.

GLAAD's Scott Seomin said he thought Kennedy's message of the gay voyeur sets gay men up for discrimination and second-class treatment. It's no mean feat to distinguish one's health magazine in the racks and racks of them, so even talking against the Gay Vague type is a wily and free ad strategy. I know it prompted me to be on the lookout for the pasty featherweights in pinstripes on Kennedy's covers.

While for ad people Gay Vague is a strategy, for me it is a perfect description of the unsettled feeling I've been having about my dear old gay movement. June used to be the month of "gay liberation" celebrations. After marathon knock-down-drag-out committee fights, the words lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gender were added. Then, because all those words took up too much space and costly ink, it became the sandwich-sounding GLBT. In the past two Junes all those hard-won words and letters have been dropped for the bland pride brand. Gay liberation marches have become pride street fairs.

Now rainbow decals and equal signs are wink-wink, nudge-nudge brands meant to signify gay identity. Attending WNBA games (the new women's music festivals), going in gay chat rooms (the new closet), and taking gay cruises ("The only straits you'll see are Gibraltar!") pass as political work. Consumerism as activism? I'm not buying it.

During the Republican Vague convention, bracketed by so-called reality TV, Log Cabin Syrup Republicans announced hopefully that anti-ERA, antichoice, pro-slavery number-two hopeful Dick Cheney is a moderate because he and his wife have a lesbian daughter. They grant him humanitarian points for not disowning or having Mary committed to an "ex-gay' rehab. They gloss over Lynne's "She did no such thing!" response to a question about Mary's coming-out.

But heck, I'll be leaving the political comedy biz soon and returning to high school English teaching, because if I heard Dubya right, there is going to be big bucks in education come November, and I for one am not going to miss the money train this time around.