In 1994, the British glossy gay magazine Attitude was well ahead of its time when, in an editorial effort to describe the straight appropriation of gay culture, it coined the word "stray". Strays are straight men and women who try on the garb of their gay counterparts in an effort to assimilate themselves into the heady mix of sex, clubs, drugs and frivolous campery the gay lifestyle is now perceived to be.
The gay man as dancing queen has outlived a host of misconceived homo-labels, from the limp-wristed cissy to the promiscuous vagabond via the predatory child molester, to anaesthetise homosexuality for mass comprehension. In the past decade, stereotyping has become a tool for fitting homosexuality into the mainstream, rather than defining it as other. After years of fighting tooth and nail for basic human rights, the gay man has found his place in the world by becoming a leader in the field of having a good time.
Ask most under-35s to describe a typical gay and they'll describe a kind of consumerist hedonist with a heart of gold, good manners and impeccable taste. Gay men, defined as a niche market since the early 1990s, have totally embraced disposable plasti-culture, and in doing so have endeared themselves to a world where shopping and clubbing are the dominant rituals. In return, straight culture has started to adopt the tenets of gay culture lock, stock and feather boa and "homo" has become shorthand for homogeneous.
This new pride parade, in which everyone can be just a little bit gay, is currently being led by pied piper Graham Norton, a television presenter who has made an art out of declaring himself gay by playing gay. Norton's camp antics and knowing entendres are a long-established, middle-of-the-road televisual technique.
In the 1970s, Larry Grayson invited audiences to laugh at his grotesque emasculated clowning and in the 1980s, Julian Clary held the queer presenter mantle with a kind of angry, sexually-loaded poke in the eye of the straights. Norton doesn't poke. He cuddles up with his audience, getting them to play his non-threatening game and presenting them with a line-up of guests that have already been recognised as iconographic within the constructs of gay culture.
Norton invites us all to be gay for his half-an-hour in the lights and provides us with a colour-by-numbers guide, so no-one will flounder.
Norton's inclusion of Sinead O'Connor in a recent guest line-up was telling. Last year, O'Connor's coming out as a "lesbian" (since then toned down to "bisexual") coincided with the launch of her album, Faith and Courage, and it would take only the most lacking in cynicism not to question the timing of her decision. In fact, the gay community in Ireland was sceptical when she made the announcement and, because it came hot on the heels of her ordination, her coming out was a slow-burner media-wise.
Her appearance on So Graham Norton last month, however, sealed a new deal. Because Norton belongs on the inside of "gay culture", he can constantly mould its ever-shifting parameters into heterosexually-friendly terms. Norton is creating gay icons for mass consumption, even though the icons he's creating have been part of gay mythology since day dot.
We get Jackie Collins and Jackie Stallone, Joan Collins and Joan Rivers. And then we got Sinead O'Connor, who, via Norton's tacit endorsement, finally grasped the gay golden egg. In a world where "out" entertainers are few and far between, she's become eternally newsworthy to the gay community, while in the realm of light entertainment she can now be identified as a "gay icon" for predominantly non-gay audiences.
On British television, Norton is followed by the likes of Dale Winton, Michael Barrymore and James Dreyfuss (who has re-appropriated the original mincing gay stereotype lad, the once vilified Are You Being Served? character, Mr Humphries, and sold it to the adoring audiences of his BBC sitcom, Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!).
Meanwhile, with the presenter of travel-cum-dating show, Wanderlust, RTE has finally copped on to stray appeal. Brendan Courtney is happy to be perceived as gay in the public domain, but although his show does feature the odd gay date, it is essentially a programme about budding heterosexual relationships. It's cross-cultural blind dates are orchestrated by a master of ceremonies who, consciously or not, mirrors much of Graham Norton's homosexual posturing, thereby encouraging his guests to join in the mimicry. The success of this ploy is startling.
While the blind daters on Cilla Black's show appeal to the common heterosexual denominator with bland standards, the boys and girls on Courtney's show camp it up mercilessly and enjoy their every moment in the pink spotlight.
Before "gay" became mainstream, mavericks such as Joe Orton, David Bowie and Jimmy Sommerville stuck out their tongues at the establishment, claiming a corner for the angry, the talented and the differently sexually oriented. But now that gay has immersed itself in hedonistic kudos, radical homosexuality has been marginalised almost out of existence.
Even gay drag has been locked into the pre-watershed, as the once shockingly in-your-face diva, Lily Savage, hosts Blankety Blank. In the sporting world, David Beckham, declared a "gay icon" by his media savvy wife, constantly uses classic gay soft-porn posturing to package his image in super-successful homoerotic terms.
In the pop world, Mel C has become one of the world's most successful female recording artists based on the ambiguously written mega-hit, Things Will Never Be the Same, and an image that exploits iconographic lesbian posturing time and time again, while Madonna - who has been borrowing from gay culture for years - recently celebrated America's biggest tacit gay male symbol, The Marlboro Man, in her Don't Tell Me video and in doing so created yet another "stray" fashion statement.
Madonna has always had the right idea. Before she came along, gay culture, with its effortless subversion of mainstream kitsch, was the best kept secret in town. Her greatest talent has been the ability to reverse the tide by mirroring camp subversion back into the mainstream. It's an ever-flowing tide. Gay culture will always appropriate and exploit mass-tack for its own ends and the likes of Madonna and Graham Norton will be able to mark it up and sell it back to the strays at a premium.