Withering Glance: The Year in Gay

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: I suppose that for an already gay-married guy like yourself, the June Supreme Court ruling was old hat.

RN: Well, it did make my vows legal whenever I traveled to, say, the Dakotas. Which is, um, never. But still, pretty great, right?

CP: This thing went faster than a wildfire in a windstorm. Before the spring of 2004, when Massachusetts stepped up, gay nuptials were illegal in every state.

RN: By comparison, American hero Elizabeth Cady Stanton was advocating for women's suffrage as early as 1848, and it took another 72 years until the 19th Amendment was ratified. If social media had been around, I'm guessing women might have been voting much earlier.

CP: Things got rolling, in terms of legal challenges, here in Minnesota 43 years ago when Jack Baker and Michael McConnell sued over being denied a marriage license. O Pioneers ... What else you got?

RN: Not that you care, soap-hater that you are, but "Days of Our Lives" killed off Will Horton and effectively wrote off his spouse, Sonny Kiriakis, meaning NBC's sole sudser pretty much lost its groundbreaking "Gays of Our Lives" story line.

CP: Please, stop.

RN: To be honest, I was hoping the Necktie Killer would choke the life out of Will. The murder weapon was a red foulard, by the way.

CP: While on the plane of the engagingly shallow, I have guilty-pleasured myself with "Empire," the Motown-meets-"Dynasty" prime time series by gay executive producer Lee Daniels and featuring Jussie Smollett as the gay son of Empire Records founder Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard).

RN: It's on my Netflix queue, per your instructions. There are too many TV gay plot lines for me to keep up with. For instance, when I remember to watch, I'm totally into Will's coming-out tale on "Nashville." It's very Ty Herndon, only much soapier.

CP: When it comes to lesbian story lines on episodic TV, "Transparent" stole thunder from "Orange Is the New Black." The episode set at a rural women's music festival? Scarifyingly hilarious.

RN: Ahem, spoiler alert. Back to the marriage thing for a sec. It's great to see so many celebrity same-sex couplings being given the People magazine treatment. Nathan Lane and Devlin Elliott, married! Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black, engaged! Cat Cora and Jennifer Cora, divorcing!

CP: Big news for Alison Bechdel. The erstwhile Twin Cities cartoonist wrote a beautiful graphic novel, "Fun Home," the musical version of which captivated Broadway and took home a fistful of Tonys, including for Best Musical.

RN: It's a bummer that pioneering blogger Andrew Sullivan pulled the plug on his stream-of-consciousness website, the Dish.

CP: At least you still have your Tom + Lorenzo.

RN: I know. Phew. I see that Out magazine placed President Obama on the cover of its annual year-end Out 100 issue, calling him "Ally. Hero. Icon." Agree?

CP: He's no Hillary. In a good way.

E-mail: witheringglance@startribune.com

Twitter: @claudepeck and @RickNelsonStrib