Blk 182 - I'm not gay, a lot of people thk I'm gay....

BLK-182'S BETIFUL, TWISTED, KD OF GAY ROMANCE

The tly guttg thg about the suatn is that—say at so—we might be wnsg the break-up of one of the greatt gay love stori Amerin, kiddg.

Tom Delonge, Mark Hopp, and Travis Barker are not, as far as the public knows, gay.

But there have fely been tim when they pretend to be somethg other than strictly example, there's this vio, when Hopp sgs, “I’m gay / so what / don’t judge / my butt”—And this vio, where Delonge, wh remarkable quickns, riffs on Barker’s var tattoos: “That ghetto blaster is always playg homosexual mic like Morrissey, Erasure.

BLK-182 MEMBER REACTS TO FAN CALLG HIM GAY, AND IT’LL SURPRISE YOU

”This is all, of urse, typilly juvenile homophobic idcy, an extensn of the same shtick that led the band to sg about havg sex wh dogs and land an Amerin Pie meo and put a porn star on the ver of an album tled Enema of the State. But playg wh and panickg at the ia of beg gay was actually more val to the band's inty than bathroom humor and skirt chasg were, and that's why their current crisis is so strikg to watch. And so is that that same EW article, Delonge dropped the g-word when talkg about his iendship wh Hopp: “It sounds stupid and gay, but the first time we sat down and played together, was jt magil.

” The thg is, to some people would sound kd of gay, and the guys' mararie is part of what spir "shippg" blogs and slash fanfictn and fake relig-right screeds about the wh the optns of acknowledgg how their iendship might be perceived or reprsg , Blk-182 dove wh glee to “acknowledge, ” and the rult was wkg butt-grabs and boxer-clad photoshoots and songs about prison rape. ")As far as I n tell, gay-rights groups never seemed to much md Blk’s antics. In her One Week One Band seri on Blk-182, wrer Rikki Reynolds poted out that the vio for "Josie"—a song about the perfect punk-rock girliend—fixated on male relatnships, wh a dose of explic gay panic g when Hopp accintally tch the eye of the chubby boy at the back of the 's not que right to ll Blk-182 extraordary any of this.

Reynolds not that "pretendg to be kda-gay orr to police the boundari of your own sexual sire through jok is a classic pop-punk move, " and the years after the band's late '90s/early 2000s heyday saw Judd Apatow's clique turn the gimmick to a blockbter dtry. And wouldn't be right to praise the band for spreadg the terrible notn of "gay" as a synonym for "gross and hilar. "But the fact remas that Blk-182's homosocial hijks fed a generatn's md an image of three guys who shared the closens of lovers.