Jul 08, 2005  |  By: Chris Crain  | COMMENTS     

For two decades, Luther Vandross sang the soundtrack to America’s bedrooms, but as much as he touched hearts and stirred loins with music about love and loss, his own romantic life remained mostly a mystery.

The black singer who proudly declared that he would never don a “blond wig” to achieve mainstream fame among white fans, nonetheless hid his own love life to placate his heterosexual female fan base.

That kind of study in contrasts would make for great reading, but you wouldn’t know it from the obituaries and “appreciation” stories published in the mainstream press after Vandross died on July 1. With rare exception, the straight press sidestepped long-standing speculation that Vandross the “lifetime bachelor” was, in fact, gay.

The de-gaying of Vandross is only the latest example of a long-standing media tradition of glossing over the personal life of anyone who does not live a publicly heterosexual life. On the obituary page, at least, homosexuality remains the love that dare not speak its name.

WHEN NOVELIST SUSAN Sontag died last December, the mainstream press published long and lavish profiles that nonetheless ignored the “open secret” of her bisexual past and long-time relationship with famed photographer Annie Leibowitz.

The straight-washing of gay artists continued in late May, when filmmaker Ismail Merchant died. Despite a 44-year relationship with James Ivory that was both professional and romantic, the mainstream press stuck to the heterosexual storyline. Does anyone doubt an epic romance that produced so many film classics would have been the subject of fawning tributes had the couple been male-female?

Criticism from this publication of the Merchant obituaries proved too much for Hank Stuever, a usually funny, very gay entertainment columnist at the Washington Post. Stuever whined at us “gripey gay media watchdogs” for pointing out the glaring omissions in the Sontag and Merchant posthumous coverage, and he offered a piece of parting advice:

“When a gay (or gayish) celebrity croaks, call your local obit desk … and give the editors a big ol’ gay heads up to make sure they know,” Stuever wrote, “especially if you can point them to any previously published references by the decedent about his or her extra-fabulous time on Earth.”

How’s that? Stuever challenges the gay press to come up with “previously published references by the decedent” about being gay, as if an obituary were merely a collection of statements by the dead person about their own life. Would that famous people could so completely control their press coverage! Of course, the press regularly reports speculation about the private lives of the famous, in life and death.

Even so, Stuever ought to be blushing now. It seems his own newspaper published an obituary of Vandross that reported — “eleventyseven” paragraphs from the lead — that there were rumors not only that Vandross was gay, but that he had AIDS.

Just in case the Post computers don’t come enabled with browsers containing the Google search engine, here’s a “big ol’ gay heads up” that there’s even more out there on whether Vandross was a homo.

In Craig Seymour’s biography of Vandross, “Luther: The Life & Longing of Luther Vandross,” the author asks the singer about the gay rumors but doesn’t get a straight answer (pun intended).

“You’re trying to zero in on something that you are never gonna get,” laughed Vandross. “Look at you, just circling the airport. You ain’t never gonna land.”

Let it be noted that in the history of humanity, no straight man — and certainly no straight African-American man — has ever refused to say whether he’s straight or gay.

Give the Post credit for at least noting the speculation, one step better than his obit in the New York Times, which waxed on in the lead that Vandross “spun romance into hits” but about his own romantic life noted cryptically, in the article’s final sentence: “Mr. Vandross is survived by his mother.”

But the F-minus goes to the Associated Press, which cheerfully reported that Vandross’ weight “fluctuated so much that rumors swirled that he had more serious health problems than the hypertension and diabetes caused by his large frame.” Can you say “AIDS,” everyone?

What’s more, AP reported that Vandross, “the lifelong bachelor, never had any children, but doted on his nieces and nephews. The ...