Gossip: Celebrity Sapphism

Arrested Development’s reigning princess of wit and charm Portia de Rossi recently dished on her struggles with the closet, noting that her final farewell to queer shame has been very recent. She was offered the role of Linda, Angelina Jolie’s lover in 1998’s critically acclaimed Gia, but opted out for fear of being outed. And during her stint as icy Nell Porter on Ally McBeal, de Rossi refused creator David Kelley’s suggestion that Nell get some girl-girl action – she was busy struggling with the media blitz that stormed when pics of her and Francesca Gregorini, her girlfriend at the time, surfaced. “A lot of models call themselves bisexual, so I just hid behind that title for a very long time…. But I knew that I was gay, I knew it. I just couldn’t see myself as a gay woman, even though that’s where my heart was.”

Funny thing, de Rossi couldn’t have chosen a bigger lesbian icon with which to hook up, nor could she have engaged in a more scandalous hook up. Remember, she left Gregorini for Ellen Degeneres last year. “I really, really hated all the pain I put Francesca through, and I really didn’t want to hurt her. But I just couldn’t ignore the feelings I had for Ellen.”

Heath Ledger, on the other hand, doesn’t get the gossip that still surrounds all things queer. In answer to the relentless questioning around he and Jake Gyllenhaal’s homo affair in Brokeback Mountain, Ledger asks, “Aren’t we at the stage these days when it just doesn’t… matter? It’s a story of love and it’s a story between two people. If people can’t get over that and just accept it as a story, then that’s their problem. I’m big enough and brave enough to do it.”

For plucky pop chanteuse Ashlee Simpson, however, it is a big deal. But she’s found a way to get around the whole “Does this make me gay?” fear by pretending to be a straight guy when she thinks about the ladies – she fantasizes, namely, about being Brad Pitt. “I’d love every woman to love me. [I would want to be with] Angelina Jolie! Well, and Jennifer Aniston. I’ll take them both.”

Miss Teen Bahamas Gari McDonald doesn’t need any boy conduit for her Sapphic eye. “Yes, I am a lesbian,” she recently announced. The revelation resulted in McDonald being stripped of her teen queen title just one week later. The spunky 18-year-old, however, isn’t giving in to the loss of her crown quietly. She’s suing the Miss Teen Bahamas Committee for sexual discrimination.

Tyra Banks on the other hand, seems to have a special place in her supermodel heart for aspiring-model dyke waifs. The upcoming fifth season of America’s Next Top Model, which premieres Wed, Sep 21, boasts another T&A loving contestant, 21-year-old Kim will carry the queer torch previously toted around by season one’s out lesbian Ebony Haith and last season’s bi wrestler Michelle Deighton.

What Kim’s got on runway, however, she lacks in humility. Her plan? “I sit back and listen and see right through these girls, and I’m smart enough to be subtle. I’m more highly educated than the other girls, and I plan to use that as an intimidation factor.” On a final note of arrogance mixed up with lesbian supermodel martyrdom: “It’s hard to be a poster child for lesbians, but someone has to do it.” Shucks.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently announced his plan to nix a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. According to Schwarzenegger’s press secretary Margita Thompson, the bill, which would’ve defined marriage as a union between “two persons,” goes against “the will of the people.” Right.

Even better? Rumour has it that when the Terminator first arrived in LA, he turned gay-for-pay tricks to pay the bills. According to Popmuse.com, Joe Gold, founder of Gold’s Gym and the man responsible for Schwarzenegger’s move to the US, allegedly divulged this and other secrets to a straight trainer just before Gold died in 2004. Among the trainer’s other revelations? That Gold himself was gay and completely in love with Schwarzenegger.

And just because it’s too awe-inspiring not to note: Britney Spears has announced that she’s discovered the Kabbalah and is very taken with it, despite the fact that she doesn’t read a whip of Hebrew: “I read the Kabbalah books and I meditate on them, [even though] they are all in Hebrew. I don’t understand everything. But it’s kind of okay that you don’t. [Hubby] Kevin [Federline] isn’t into it as intensely as I am. For some reason I’m thirsting for it. But he looks at the books every once in a while.”