Is there a new definition of "out"?

Time was, you weren't officially out (especially if you were a celebrity) until you declared it in public. You had to stand before a microphone and say, "Yes, I'm gay," or "Yes, I'm a lesbian."

Or you had to speak to Barbara Walters. Or become a spokesperson for a gay organization.

Or you had to give an exclusive magazine interview, where you declared - as Ellen DeGeneres did in 1997 - something like "Yep, I'm gay."

Clay Aiken did exactly that last week with his People magazine interview. The cover line? "Yes, I'm gay."

But unlike Ellen, who caused a firestorm of response and a temporary halt to what has turned out to be a long-lived career, people mostly looked at the Aiken cover and either shrugged or said they supported him.

Why the shrug? Because gayness is no longer something extraordinary or indecent. It is not longer about the Love That Won't Dare Speak It's Name.

Instead, it's become a lot more like heterosexual love - something to parade on red carpets, to sweeten with children, to commit to in sickness and in health.

Which makes me wonder: Is the Aiken cover the death knell of the public proclaiming of gayness?

Take Aiken's counter-example of Lindsay Lohan.

Lohan has no magazine interview where she declares, "For sure! I'm gay!" I've seen nothing on record where she identifies herself as a lesbian.

Instead, she has simply been very public about being in love with DJ Samantha Ronson. Not in the creepy, Tom-Cruise-jumping-on-a-couch kind of way, but in a quiet, respectful way. The women have been photographed holding hands everywhere; they seem to always be together.

And when Lohan was asked how long the two of them had been together on a call-in radio show, she simply answered, "A long time."

In other words, Lohan and Ronson act just like famous (and not-so-famous) heterosexual couples do.

There was no public proclamation, because there was no need for one. The world has changed, and with it, the definition of what it is to be out.

Public proclaiming always felt to me to be both necessary and unfair. On the one hand, what heterosexual had to give a magazine interview assuring people of his or her straightness? (Unless, of course, that heterosexual was actually "secretly" gay and trying to hide it.)

On the other hand, if we didn't proclaim in public - if we didn't take the microphone on National Coming Out Day or gather our families to tell them explicitly that yes, we're gay - then we were invisible.

Straight people could pretend that we didn't exist. And people who don't exist don't get civil rights.

I'm not saying that we're in the clear now. Of course we're not. We are still far, far from achieving full equality, and there are still plenty of people who don't think we should be able to recognize our relationships.

Studies have shown that knowing gay people makes a real difference in how straight people view LGBT civil rights - and celebrities often feel like friends. It is always wonderful to have a new, particularly beloved, celebrity join our parade. Clay Aiken is welcome.

But I think acknowledging one's gayness to oneself and others is becoming less a question of COMING out and more of simply BEING out.

We are more likely now, I think, to just be ourselves, living our lives. To hold hands with our girlfriends. To join our husbands at back-to-school meetings. To snuggle on the train.

Being out is something all of us can do. We don't have to talk to a magazine. We don't even necessarily have to have "the talk" with our families or friends. We don't have to have some intense, confrontational (or cathartic) coming out.

Instead, we can invite them to our weddings, and talk about our husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends the same way heterosexuals do.

We no longer need to proclaim our sexuality in public, because it is no longer assumed that all people are heterosexual. We no longer need to shout, "We're here! We're queer!" to show people that we exist.

We only have to be open about who we are and who we love.

And that is a world I'm happy to live in.

Clay Aiken is gay. This is not news.

Lindsay Lohan might be gay, too. (Her answer during a radio interview was noncommittal enough to leave room for "clarifications" later.) Big yawn.

You know what would be news? It would be news to learn that a well-known pop star called People magazine to say "I'm gay!" and People responded with a "So what?" I long for the day when a star's coming out is not worthy of magazine space, much less a cover story.

We have not yet reached that day.

Clay Aiken's coming out was about as surprising as Elton John's, only less courageous. (Remember that John came out twenty years ago, at the height of the AIDS crisis, when gay sex was still illegal in many parts of this country.) For years certain bloggers have referred to Aiken as "Gayken," a practice as otiose as it is childish. An online poll revealed that 96 percent of respondents were not surprised by his announcement.

The other 4 percent, presumably, also insist that Liberace was merely "artistic."

I certainly don't mean to criticize Aiken for his honesty, and I can't blame him for wanting to capitalize on it with a cover story. I have no idea what People paid him for the scoop, if anything, but I suspect he got more than I did when I came out in an op-ed in my college paper. (I think they gave me a coupon for a free pizza.)

Incidentally, that was in 1989, a year after Elton John came out as gay. It was harder then, no doubt because so few public figures had done it.

Aiken's coming out adds to that growing list of public figures, and for that we should be thankful. There are interesting dimensions to his story, including his identifying as a born-again Christian and his generally wholesome image. (My late grandmother, like many grandmothers, adored him on American Idol.)

Some might hope that his revelation will reach a demographic not otherwise friendly to gay issues, reminding them that we truly are everywhere. I'm skeptical. Aiken just had a child out of wedlock, via artificial insemination, with a much older female friend. His fellow born-again Christians will likely see him less as a role-model than as a cautionary tale.

So if progressives shrug and traditionalists scold, what can Aiken's coming out teach us? Two things, I think.

First, that if you're going to use the "My sexual orientation is private and none of your business" line, as Aiken did repeatedly, then don't be surprised if few care when you announce your gayness on the cover of People.

Aiken is hardly alone in exploiting the ambiguity of the claim that sexual orientation is "private." Private in the sense of being deeply personal and deserving of non-interference? Absolutely. Private in the sense of being secret? Only if you insist on making it so.

That was Aiken's right, of course. But it was also our right to notice his doing it. It was not our right to nag him about it-he was young, and still figuring it all out-but it was our right to refuse to go along with treating gayness as somehow unspeakable. Aiken's story underscores how the convention of the closet is crumbling. This is progress.

The second thing his coming out teaches us is that while simple honesty is good, it is no longer enough. It may be enough (for now) to get you on the cover of People, but it's not enough, I'll wager, to get readers rushing to the newsstands.

I'm surprised, frankly, that it's still enough to get you on the cover of People-even if you are the most famous American Idol runner-up ever (my grandmother went to her grave insisting that Ruben had robbed him of the rightful title) and you have a cute baby in an unconventional family arrangement. I don't expect People to be The Economist, but I do expect something fresher and more stimulating than "Yes, I'm Gay."

And so let me close with a plea to our LGBT organizations. For the love of Jehovah, don't invite Aiken to headline fundraising dinners or pride events unless and until he actually does something more to advance gay rights. "Yes, I'm Gay" may be enough to impress People. It should no longer be enough to impress us.

And that, too, is progress.

When the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) recently endorsed John McCain for president the usual suspects bitterly denounced them. Treason! Delusional! Selfish! Self-hating! These criticisms misunderstand Log Cabin's basic mission. In the context of that mission, LCR's endorsement was sensible.

As usual when I write about Log Cabin, I should first explain my own history with the group. Back in the mid-1990s, I was president of the group's Texas chapter. I also served briefly on LCR's national board of directors in the late 1990s. Although I have many friends in LCR, I've had no role in the organization for eight years.

Critics of the endorsement basically argue as follows: (1) LCR is a gay-rights group. (2) Gay-rights groups should endorse the candidate who's better on gay rights. (3) McCain is worse on gay issues than Barack Obama. (4) Conclusion: LCR should not have endorsed McCain.

What explains LCR's endorsement in the face of this simple logic? LCR's critics offer several explanations.

Some say that Log Cabin must simply be ignorant of the candidates' stands on a familiar list of issues, like employment-discrimination protection and the military's gay exclusion. But LCR's directors and members are very well informed on these and other political issues.

Other critics say that LCR members must be self-hating. This charge is silly and uninformed. LCR recognizes, and actively opposes, the anti-gay tendencies in the GOP.

Finally, some critics conclude that LCR's members must care more about their own pocketbooks, preferring tax cuts over their own (or others') civil rights. Many label this selfishness or, worse, a betrayal of gay rights.

Some LCR members may indeed be stereotypically selfish Republicans - - just as some gay liberals are soft-headed and hopelessly naive. But the fairer description is that they simply believe libertarian or conservative positions on economic and foreign-policy matters better serve the public interest. That's what makes them Republicans, after all.

There is also irony in this criticism. It typically comes from left-leaning activists who have been counseling us for years that gay rights, narrowly conceived, are not the only thing that matters. LCR has taken this counsel to heart and, as a frankly partisan organization (unlike the Human Rights Campaign), it must consider its party's positions on non-gay matters.

The deeper problem is that LCR's critics fundamentally misconceive the organization's mission. Critics analyze the endorsement through a standard civil-rights lens. A gay-rights group should look at the candidates, they reason, and choose the candidate who's "better" today solely on the basis of gay rights.

This kind of analysis would almost always mean endorsing a Democrat over a Republican opponent. Fine, say the critics.

But the problem is that it leaves no room for a gay Republican organization working from within the party to improve it on gay issues while retaining its GOP credentials. Having some credibility as a Republican group is essential to LCR's mission. Otherwise, it's just a garden-variety gay-rights group.

Quite a few people think it's delusional to imagine that a few thousand gay Republicans are likely to have any effect on today's GOP, which is dependent on a "base" intensely hostile to gay equality. There's some truth in this. If the Republican Party is to change on gay issues, the primary reason will be huge shifts in the culture for which no single organization can claim credit.

But there is some value in having a group of openly gay people within the party embracing its basic philosophy while simultaneously endorsing gay equality. Such a group can have a uniquely positive impact given its special niche in the political system. These gay GOP activists literally embody the future Republican Party we must have if gay equality is to survive shifting electoral allegiances.

LCR operates on the principle that a political party that genuinely embraces small government and individual rights would be a good thing for everybody, including gay people. It endorses candidates based on long-term considerations about how to advance gay equality within a conservative political party.

This does not mean LCR should support all Republican candidates. However, the question for LCR is not reducible to weighing the candidates' paper positions on gay rights. The question is whether, given the context, including the overall tone of the campaign and the salience of gay issues within that campaign, the Republican candidate meets a minimum threshold of respect for the rights and dignity of gay Americans.

In 2004, George W. Bush did not meet that test after he backed an anti-gay federal marriage amendment that would have ended the possibility of gay marriage anywhere in the country for decades.

McCain, whatever his shortcomings, loudly and articulately opposed that amendment. His opposition was maintained at considerable political cost to himself. It takes nothing away from his courage to observe that he did so in defense of federalism, rather than in defense of gay marriage itself. Many Republicans and Democrats were ready, in the hothouse of that time, to ditch federalism in order to appease religious conservatives and others opposed to gay marriage.

McCain's opposition gave political cover to other Republicans and even Democrats to oppose the amendment. Thus was removed a dagger aimed at the infant heart of the gay-marriage movement.

To refuse to endorse him after that singular act, especially when he is famously alien to the party's religious conservatives (despite his recent pandering to them), would have been practically to forfeit any role for LCR within the GOP. And that would have been no favor to gay Americans.