Is TV's gayest network tailor-made for straight people?

Dear Savage Love: Recently, my girlfriend signed up for digital cable, and one night, while all alone, I happened upon LOGO, TV's first LGBT (that's "lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender" for you squares) cable network. That was last week, and I haven't been able to pry myself from the channel ever since. Between the Goldfrapp videos, re-runs of Party Monster and hilarious nudge-wink advertising for workout gear and gay tours of Philly, color me hooked! Does this make me gay?

Personally, I doubt if my letter would ever make Dan Savage's weekly museum of freakosity, but hey, it's a relevant question, as LOGO is probably the single most fun station on your entire worthless cable box.

But it's unlikely that LOGO was created expressly for curious non-gay onlookers, and that's precisely what makes it more than a Style channel you can dance to. A child of MTV Networks, LOGO finally launched late last year after spending years in the hopper, creating, we can only imagine, endless meetings and even more infuriatingly stupid high-horse anti-gay hoopla.

Now that it's here, though, LOGO seems not to be the homo recruitment tool the Santorums of the world feared, but rather a feather-light preach-to-the-choir operation that also hits lots of excellent not-necessarily-gay time-waster-TV spots.

Among them: NewNowNext, LOGO's version of 120 Minutes, which could be the closest thing on TV right now to what 120 Minutes once was in terms of breaking new and buzzworthy artists; reruns of gay-friendly shows like Xena: Warrior Princess and Wonder Falls; plenty of travel and style shows; any number of afterschool special-ish "Mom I'm Gay" dramas; and weirdly, the CBS/LOGO news bites that pepper the hours, wherein megagay anchors-cum-VJs deliver the latest news about, I shit you not, the cop from The Village People. Oh, and the other day, they were showing Morrissey: Who Put The M In Manchester?

All told, this is everything you ever wanted from cable, if what you wanted was mostly pleasant idle-time programming. So on one level, you find yourself saying, "So what if it's gay?" Well, point taken. And if nothing else, LOGO has succeeded in taking us away from cable's mad parade of tattooists who believe they're artists and replaced them with hairdressers on fire. Which is always more fun.

But don't kid yourself. Like any other MTV Network, LOGO is there because it brings in bucks. There's tons of commercials, and what they say about LOGO's presumed audience may not be a very nice thing at all. This is anecdotal, of course, but nearly all of the ads I've peeped on LOGO point toward an exploitation of every awful cliche about gay vanity you've ever heard. Workout gear. Diet supplements. Skin care. And on and on. On one hand, you could cry foul and blast LOGO for playing to a gay beauty myth that has got to be the bane of existence for thousands of its viewers; on the other hand, you could say what I said: "How come they never advertise these products for the millions of totally fugly straight people who actually need them?"

The answer, of course, is simple: Straight people don't want that shit. They want television to lull them into a false sense of comfort. Apparently gay people want the same thing. Both are understandable, but also dangerous. If LOGO wants to be a true voice of gayness, they're going to have to, at some point, stop playing a straight person's game. They're going to have to make it not feel so comfy.

April 13-27, 2006

Thu., April 13, 9 p.m., ABC

Apparently, American Inventor aims to teach us the lesson that BattleBots somehow did not: That dads with zero technical know-how and a garage full of crap are the best dads in the world. God bless America.

Sat., April 15, 10:30 p.m., CN8

That's right, people: It's 2006, high tide in the media age, and CN8 is just running tape of sub-Kenny-G, Cosby-sweater dudes and calling it television. When I think of this, I smile, and think what it might be like if one day, space aliens came down, took over and made us all smoke joints curved to the exact angles of the forthcoming Comcast Tower. The beauty and precision brings me to tears.

Sun., April 16, 9 p.m., Food Network

Oh, forget The Sopranos, with all that darkness and literate heft! We're trying to find the next Alton Brown here! Sheesh!