By Gary Barlow

Not his good side
Ready for your close-up?

Well, not if you’re Barack Obama and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is around.

The San Francisco Chronicle quoted former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown recounting Obama’s reaction when he found out Newsom was at a fundraiser for him in 2004.

Brown was giving the San Francisco fundraiser for Obama’s Senate campaign. At the time, Newsom was generating headlines for directing San Francisco officials to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

Brown told the Chronicle, “And he (Obama) said to me he would really appreciate it if he didn’t get his photo taken with my mayor. He said he would really not like to have his picture taken with Gavin.”

While the Obama campaign has denied the allegation, Newsom’s staff confirmed Brown’s account. And it corroborates what Newsom himself told Reuters last month. Asked about the leading Democratic presidential contenders at the time—Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards—and gay marriage, Newsom said, “One of the three Democrats you mentioned as presidential candidates, as God is my witness, will not be photographed with me, will not be in the same room with me, even though I’ve done fundraisers for that particular person not once but twice, because of this issue.”

Newsom, you might have guessed, has endorsed Clinton.

She found someone
Of course, Obama has Oprah, but Hillary might have found the one backer who can top Oprah, at least in the gay community. That’s right—count Cher on board the Clinton train.

“I’m supporting her because I know her and I like her and she’s smart and a tough girl,” Cher told USA Today last week.

And Cher also had big news for fans who thought that farewell tour she did a few years back really meant goodbye. It didn’t. She’s performing four shows per week for a month, beginning May 6, at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. And she’ll return to the Colosseum stage in mid-August and alternate shows with Bette Midler until early October.

As if they needed help swooning, Cher also threw some bouquets to her gay fans, telling USA Today, “Gay men understand that I understand what it’s like to be an outsider. To singers, I wasn’t a singer. To actors, I wasn’t an actor. I know what it’s like to fight for your place. Besides, gay men are very choosy, and they have great taste.”

Falling skies
Maybe Cher should book a show in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.

After all, the quaint tourist attraction in the Ozarks has been taken over by “professional homosexual activists,” according to the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association.

As reported in last week’s Dallas Voice, the fundamentalist group has put out a video, “They’re Coming to Your Town,” that alleges that gays began targeting Eureka Springs in the 1960s but kept it on the down low until recently.

“They have come out of the closet now, and they are trying to or have taken over a lot of the operations of the city government,” a local minister says in the video.

All this stems from the town’s city council approving a pretty innocuous domestic partners registry almost two years ago, mind you.

Of course, the video, which sells for $14.95, has a solution to stop the “professional homosexual activists” in your town. Sign up as a supporter of the AFA, it urges, and send money.

Sheesh—what a way to make a living, huh?

Saying our prayers
We’re not the only ones dealing with pushy fundamentalists.

Last week in the Netherlands Muslim fundamentalists forced a museum in The Hague to remove art by an Iranian exile because it included photos of gay Iranians wearing masks of the Prophet Muhammed and his son-in-law, Ali.

And the fundamentalists went even further, sending death threats to the artist, Sooreh Hera, and forcing her into hiding.

Hera defended her work, saying she was making a statement about the hypocrisy of Iranian officials who prosecute and execute gay men.

“It is not an artist’s job just to paint flowers,” Hera said. “Art should shine a light on social issues.”

Another museum offered to exhibit the works but was already dealing with protests over that plan last weekend. Hera said she has no regrets.

“I do it for them—for the boys and girls with no freedom in Iran,” she said.

You know, if there was a God, you’d think he’d be embarrassed enough to do something about these people.