Leno is the hot seat.

Jay Leno set off a firestorm in the blogosphere Wednesday when he asked actor Ryan Phillipe to give him his "gayest look," noting that his start in acting was as a gay teen on the soap opera "One Life to Live."

While talking with Phillippe, whose appearance aired March 19 and was keyed to his new movie "Stop-Loss," Leno, 57, said to the actor, "Can you give me, like - say that camera is your gay lover ... "

Despite Phillippe's instant discomfort, Leno went on to say, "Can you give me your 'gayest look?'"

"Wow," replied Phillippe, 33. "That is so something I don't want to do."
Leno apologized after the uproar online: "In talking about Ryan's first role, I realize that what I said came out wrong," he said. "I certainly didn't mean any malice. I agree it was a dumb thing to say, and I apologize."

The website "My Gayest Look," now hosts the video, and provides contact information at MSNBC. People "all over the world" are taking pictures of themselves posting their "gayest look" for Leno, Blue writes.

"I'm not saying that Leno's in the closet, but I will point out that there's 'something about Mary' that gives Leno enough of a woody to spout jokes that are insensitive, beyond poor taste, and just make him look out of step with the rest of culture, and applicable to an ever-thinning audience," Blue writes. "An audience that even at its most conservative, has a gay family member somewhere, and likely has more tolerance than he does.

"On the other hand," she continues, "if people like Leno want to cling to their ridiculing and homophobes want to imagine that Caligula lives down the street from me, that's kind of OK with me. I put Leno in the same category as the San Francisco cab driver who picked me up and started going off about the "filthy" homosexuals in the Castro; I asked him to pull over and, when safely out of his cab, I told him to never pick me up again. And the same category as those few people who, when I travel and I tell them I'm from San Francisco, express pity, or crack jokes, or ask if it's hard to find guys to date. Because of all the gays."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Sex_educator_to_Leno_Homphobia_and_0403.html