We are Stealth.

Being gay is like being a Stealth bomber. It takes many years and untold millions to develop yourself, every detail of your existence is a state secret, you fly under the radar as much as you can, you pinpoint your targets with laser accuracy, and, when necessary, you envelop yourself in a shield so no one will know you're around. I was sitting in a room the other day that had so many Stealth bombers parked in it, it could have been officially designated a hangar. But you'd never know we were there.

It was what they call an Industry Function, the show business version of the Kiwanis or Rotary. This particular outfit is the much-revered Hollywood Radio and Television Society (HRTS--actually pronounced "hurts," in the tacit acknowledgment that there is no pleasure in Hollywood without pain, usually someone else's). HRTS, which is composed of all the important TV and radio executives on the West Coast and the agents, managers, writers, directors, and producers who sell to them, throws a monthly luncheon at which much schmoozing occurs and then, promptly at 1, a panel discussion is held. The subject of last month's colloquy was minority representation on network TV.

My cohort and occasional employer Whoopi Goldberg was the moderator, an event that goes on record as the first and last time the words Whoopi Goldberg and moderate will be used in the same sentence. She started the afternoon off by thanking one of the chairs of the event, whose name was Andrew, with "Thank you, Andy. And give my regards to Amos." The panel featured a wide spectrum of participants. There was the black woman who created Living Single and now produces For Your Love. There was the white president of UPN, the network whose name Whoopi says stands for Unusually Pretty Negroes. There was an old Marxist armed with data attesting to the poor showing of minorities in network programming and his belief that the public airwaves must be reclaimed from commercial interests. There was the very sharp Nely Galan, who went from inventing MTV's Latin-American channel to running Telemundo, the all-Spanish network where she is, not surprisingly, the only woman in the executive suite and, very surprisingly, the only person who speaks Spanish. And there was Geraldo, the old one-stop convenience store of minorities.

Squabbling began almost at once, and people were making no sense from the downbeat. The producer railed on about how there has never been a black Nielsen family and then began producing Nielsen statistics on how many black people watched her show. Stuff like that.

When the floor was finally open to questions, a young Asian man got up and asked why there were no Asians on the panel. That stopped everyone. Well, there was one high-ranking exec who had been asked, but he had declined to participate. He didn't want to be there just because he was Asian.

At that point I was about to shout, "Where are the fags?" but I realized that they were all around me. Any one of the couple of dozen gay people I had seen in the crowd--including me--would have been well-qualified to be up there. I don't believe any of us were asked. There is a persistent feeling among straight people that we don't really qualify as a genuine minority because we choose whether or not we wish to identify ourselves. We are Stealth.

The idea that flying under the radar and keeping all aspects of our emotional lives secret guarantees us our civil rights and therefore makes us unworthy of consideration is still very prevalent in a lot of quarters. And we do nothing to help ourselves when we are asked to participate if we demur and mumble something about not wanting to be known as the Gay Guy. If we're not willing to stand up and present ourselves as integrated human beings whose sexuality is a component of a balanced and productive life, then straight people can't be expected to figure it out. They're still trying to make sense out of baseball.