Gore Vidal has never been one to keep his mouth shut. Even on the homosexual activist agenda! That includes the subject of gay marriage, which he's never been a fan of. But not in the Elton John sort of way. But in a "even straight marriages are F'd" sort of way. In 2006, he told Time, "Since heterosexual marriage is such a disaster, why on earth would anybody want to imitate it?" His position hasn't changed, but the recipient of his ire may have. He's now going after Americans!

Like pal Dennis Altman, Vidal thinks the idea of gay marriage is bogus. But then why are we all fighting mad about securing the right to, one day, get a divorce? Because we are ignorant patriots, that's why.

“I’m not into partnerships,” Vidal, a single man, says. "I don’t even know what it means. [I couldn't] couldn’t care less [about same-sex marriage. Does anyone care what Americans think? They’re the worst-educated people in the First World. They don’t have any thoughts, they have emotional responses, which good advertisers know how to provoke.”

(Vidal, a former Hillary Clinton supporter who switched to Barack Obama, has his own criticism of the current president. Obama is doing "[d]readfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time. But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism. … He f***ed [health care] up. I don’t know how because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen")

Now, it's easy to dismiss the ramblings of an octogenarian who, it could be argued, is out of touch with the priorities of gay Americans today. But this is a man who appeared on Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G show as himself. He must get us, right?

 “Male homosexuality, pushing outward into risky, alien territory, is progressive and – overall - intellectually stimulating.”

Camille Paglia - Italianamerican pagan and cultural iconoclast strongly identifies with gay men. To the extent that she is often attracted to them - from the perspective of a gay male.  Professor Paglia has been  upturning conventional thinking in academe since her collegiate youth in Upstate New York while writing Sexual Personae - her fearless, illuminating expedition into Western culture.  She’s also a huge fan of Madonna. Her office at the University of Arts at Philadelphia is distinguished by two features: a Babylonian erection of books and a colour photograph of La Ciccione in a bustier that could compete with America's nuclear deterrent.

The nemesis of white, upper-middle class feminists and Suzanne Vega aficionados alike, Paglia rejects French Theory  - Foucault knew fuck-all - that constituted the lit bateau of 1970s feminism, instead embracing Nietzsche's postmodernisn and divorcing herself from what she perceived to be that school’s increasingly anti-male ideology. She was instantly unfashionable.  Banished to the Siberia of the academic, it took her twenty years to return.

Believing that feminism has led men into becoming contemporary eunuchs, Paglia wants to reclaim masculinity to reinform the political correction we have arrived at today:

“We want a hard penis. We want masculine vigour. To men I say: ‘Get It On!’ To women I say, ‘Deal With It!’

Well, one doesn't want to be strapped into a time machine and shot backwards to an age of archaic, Sicilian machismo  but neither does one wish to see men in American Tan tights all the time. She expresses a desire to "restore the penis back to its former position of centre-stage." I know a few people who would gladly put in free overtime to help Ms Paglia with the hydraulic crane. They are all female.

She was universally upbraided in the furore surrounding her comments on date rape:
“The uncontrollable aspect of male sexuality is part of what makes sex interesting. And yes, sometimes it can lead to rape in some situations.”

I think what alarmed people was the declaration that men's penises somehow possess an unrestrainable autonomy that operates independently from the will. In some cases, it does. Moreover, there was a widespread misapprehension that she was condoning rape. In truth, she was defending the quintessential freedom of women (or men, for that matter) to wear a micro-skirt, to get drunk and to hitch a ride in Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen Beetle - providing they acknowledge the risk and accept the onus of personal responsibility in doing so.

If contemporary liberalism has been untruthful to women about the world -  and about men - Paglia volubly reminds us of that fact.  She examines gender, sexuality and feminism through the prism of art and cultural history, as set forth in one of her best books, Sex, Art, And American Culture. On popular music she notes that even Greek Tragedy never gave full expression to the Dionysian impulse - the uninhibited, irrational and orgiastic self - until rock’n’roll squeezed into its first box-fresh leather catsuit. That’s something you’d rarely hear within Viognier-sipping intellectual circles. Further, here is a woman who unselfconsciously namechecks Hitchcock’s The Birds and Proust in the same breath.

Sound bite queen, 'outlaw' polemicist, some of her best work is while extemporising over the telephone - possibly going into raptures over Keith Richard. The fraternity and the media is undecided as to whether La Paglia is an inspired tour guide or one of the great intellectuals of the late 20th century. What is certain is that she is one hell of a Motormouth Maybelline.