Taking it off

Sometimes, when a hot male celebrity takes his shirt off, it's for a cause. What cause remains to be determined.

Take, for example, rightwing anti-choice poster boy Tim Tebow (below). The college football player, whose pastimes include shilling for abortion bans in Super Bowl commercials, and traveling to Africa with his church group to force boys into getting circumcisions, is also, according to critics, not a very great player. Since I no longer write my sports column, I'll leave the technical critiques to others.

But for some reason (a body fat test?), Tebow allowed himself to be videotaped and photographed at some Gatorade-sponsored thingy where he sat in a big fish bowl in his underpants. While fans appreciated the show of pulcritude, others, like this blog, focused on the lack of girth between his legs. Maybe when his weenie got snipped, they trimmed it a bit too closely.

A completely different perspective from another football player was that of New Orleans Saint Scott Fujita, who, while straight, came out in support of gay rights and birth control (unlike Tebow).

Here's Fujita taking his shirt off for some event, not a gay one. But it's nice, anyway.

Continuing with sports, now out gay British rugby player Gareth Thomas (top pic) continues a very visible campaign of doing interviews and taking his shirt off. It's nice to see a rough, manly, actively playing jock who also has a hot body. Not into the tattoos, but hey, nobody's perfect.


And then, much lower on the celebrity scale, Scott Herman, one of the dozens of hunks from MTV's 'Real World' (season 25 or longer) has boldly taken off his shirt to pose in the utterly useless NoH8 campaign. You know, the one that only got any attention outside the gay media enclave when rightwing Cyclon wife Cindy McCain and her daughter posed for it. Yeah, they got a few moments of 30-second news items on TV gossip shows. But did their vague efforts change any minds, like that of their cranky husband and father? No.

So, what happens when a cute straight model strips down against Prop 8? Well, a few queens critique Scott Herman's efforts on the popular blog Towleroad.com, and within minutes, he posts a defensive retort, mentioning his numerous degrees and business successes, then castigates a few for not doing anything. "What have you done with your lives that gives you the right to judge anyone?" wrote Herman.

You know, there's nothing more funny than being told off by a straight twink half your age that you're not doing enough for gay rights. Because, apparently, taking your shirt off is a great humanitarian act. You didn't know that? Neither did I.