Let's recap. Tom Selleck is not:
gay; homophobic; a candidate for the U.S. Senate; a former campaign stump machine for George Bush and Bob Dole. Here's the background, in order of juiciest stuff first:
The nope-not-gay refutation comes in the September 16 issue of The Advocate, a leading gay and lesbian magazine. Whispers about the so-called truth of his private life have dogged the 52-year-old actor since he hit it big in 1980 with the TV cop show Magnum P.I.
Selleck makes it plain to the Advocate that he's straight and that "it's not anti-gay to say that you're not gay."
The classically handsome Three Men and a Baby star has taken heat in the past for publicly declaring that he was "singularly heterosexual" and vigorously protesting (to the tune of a $20 million lawsuit) a 1991 tabloid story that suggested he was gay--statements some construed as homophobic, or disinformation designed to throw people off his trail. Not so, says Selleck.
"I would have had the same problem--felt the same kind of righteous indignation--if somebody had said I was having an affair with some actress I had never met," he told the mag.
The once-divorced Selleck married former dancer Jilly Mack in 1987. They have one daughter.
Selleck tells the Advocate that he expects gay rumors to start anew with the release of his upcoming movie, In & Out. In it, he plays a gay journalist. Selleck says it took him 30 takes to get a smooch right with costar Kevin Kline. He found the scene "difficult."
As for the Citizen Selleck stuff--that started in a New York Times article. Columnist Maureen Dowd wrote last week that G.O.P. leaders in California were trying to enlist Selleck to run for the Senate.
"Half-truths and fabrications," responded Selleck, a familiar TV pitchman for William F. Buckley's conservative newsmag, National Review.
As for the Bob Dole, George Bush stuff? That was more fodder from Dowd's column. She wrote that Selleck had campaigned for those two Republican stalwarts. Selleck says he did no such thing.
And just to top off this week of denials, Selleck's father, Robert, told a reporter that his famous offspring isn't even a Republican. He's a registered independent with libertarian leanings.