The current issue of The Advocate includes a story about Hispanic Chicago teenagers running a Spanish-language radio show for their GLBTZ peers and a story about the courage of a Kentucky high school gay-staight alliance in fighting the homophobia of an entire county. Both stories were illustrated with the smiling faces of bright, courageous (and, incidently, media-photogenic) youth working as real "advocates."

The cover story is labelled, "SAPPHIC SALMA," with the beautiful Salma Hayek behind the sub-headline, "PLAYING BISEXUAL IN HER NEW FILM, FRIDA, SEXY SELMA HAYEK COMES CLEAN ABOUT HER ATTRACTION TO GAY ROLES, HER PASSION FOR STRONG WOMEN, AND KISSING ASHLEY JUDD."

It sounds like a supermarket tabloid, and The Advocate basically pursues a star-stuck and mostly mindless agenda. Still, the magazine maintains that it represents the gay community, so, instead of cover stories honoring strong people who bravely stick their necks out for what they believe and what they are, why do we so often get cover stories about people whose claim to our attention is not much different from that of, say, an insurance salesman whose bravest gay-positive career decision might include deciding to taking a commission for selling a homo a life policy?

Shamefully, the answer is partly in ourselves, and not in our "stars," since the commercial media survives on what it believes we want to see and read.

The film and television stars who blind the Advocate editors and their readers are doing [whatever gets our attention] because its their job, while the teenagers in the back pages are doing their stuff in order that they and their peers might survive.