The cover story of the latest Advocate -- The Cost of Being Gay by John Cloud -- is a triumph. It deftly delves into the heady murk of sexual politics and consumerism and comes up with a solid thesis about gay identity. In case you don't have time to read the entire article, I've condensed each paragraph into one sentence, and -- if I must say so myself -- crystallized this brilliant work into a journalistic gem.

I don't want to sound pretentious, but I've been thinking about this a lot: are you still gay if you don't buy the right stuff? I mean, what you buy is what you are, which means with the tanking economy it's gotten really hard for me to keep being gay.

I actually had to buy $145 jeans instead of my favorite $300+ ones! Sure, I could have spent less, but compared to the $300+ jeans, $145 is a bargain -- and besides, nobody's gonna make this queen wear Gap.

Gay men make money than hetero men. I think that's because we work harder, knowing that if we bought cheap shit we wouldn't be gay any more.

Lesbians are just as poor as heteros because they're more woman than gay.

When times are tough, people get fired, and sometimes gay people are the first to go. We're still spending, though, and taking exotic vacations. We don't like saving. Even in these hard times, we can't stop buying stuff.

Some researchers say it's actually physically difficult for us gays to put those designer wallets away. That's because we've only got so much self-control. We work so hard to get people to like us, we have to console ourselves with expensive chairs. I mean, black people get stressed out with all that race crap, so it makes sense we get stressed out being gay.

But mostly, I think it comes down to this: you can't be gay in shit like Hanes.