Ask. Tell. — Homosexuality and the media

And why wouldn't they be inspired? Talking explicitly about previously taboo subcultures is bound to yield fresh material. Trouble is, an awful lot of questionable stuff is getting by on the shock of the new. Is it funny, for instance, when Saddam Hussein turns out the light in the South Park movie and, over noisy sounds of sex, tells his lover Satan, ''Yeah, you like that, don't you, bitch?'' For many gay viewers, the answer is, yes, it's hilarious — in the context of treating the Satan-Saddam relationship in daytime-talk-show terms of ''self-esteem'' and communication ''issues.'' On the other hand, it's clear that a lot of teenage boys thought the movie was one big gay-sex-is-disgusting joke. We're all laughing — but some of us for worse reasons than others.

It's a sign of the times that this kind of double-edged humor pervades the summer's biggest teen hits, Scary Movie and Bring It On, films that relentlessly portray gay sexuality as occasions for ridicule. Many of the high school students in Bring It On say things like ''That's so gay'' in the same loaded way as the kids in a public service TV ad (featuring Matthew Shepard's mom) that decries such language as the seed of hate crime. Worse, the movie tries to soft-pedal the ugly behavior by allowing a male cheerleader to come out and get an accepting shrug in response — a completely hypocritical and flatly unbelievable plot point.

The gay-phobic cracks in Scary Movie at least have a certain built-in defensibility: Teen slasher pics have always been about sexual anxiety, and what causes more teen sexual anxiety than the suspicion that you might be gay? What's absent from the flick is any sort of relief or balance. The transgendered gym teacher is a dirty old man and a dirty old woman, a monstrosity who leers at every girl in the locker room. And when the dopey jock played by Marlon Wayans as a raging closet case is attacked by a penis plunging through his auditory canal — shown, incredibly, in graphic close-up — it's as toxic and off-putting a sexual image as anything in A Clockwork Orange. Where were the MPAA when they were needed? Apparently, asleep in the screening room.

Still, there's nothing in the R-rated Scary Movie nearly as offensive as the giant rampaging hamster in Eddie Murphy's PG-13 hit Nutty Professor II. Every tired riff about anal sex imaginable is heaped on a wimpy supporting character who's known as ''the hamster's bitch'' after the animal gets frisky with him. Message: Gay sex is inherently risible, not to mention tantamount to bestiality. But hey, Eddie Murphy didn't mean it that way, did he?

We'll have to get a taste check from Richard Hatch on that one.

— Steve Daly