Metro

A hit with lesbians

To girls in the ‘hood, Elena Kagan rocks.

Softball-playing sisters and lipstick lesbians who gather in Brooklyn’s Park Slope have suffered years of intolerance, leading to a grudging acceptance. But now, life and style choices favored in gay corners of the Slope have become, remarkably, fashionable. Chic, even.

So it was no surprise on a recent night in Ginger’s Bar — New York’s sapphic central for ladies who love — that President Obama’s pick for the US Supreme Court was the subject of rip-roaring debate.

“I’m proud,” said Nancy Pagan, 32, who plays third base on a softball team called the Flamingoes. “At least, I want to be proud. I think it’s important to be who you are.”

“I think she should be whatever she wants to be,” countered Alex Winters, 28.

They argued and jousted over Kagan’s rumored sexual orientation.

Kagan at first seemed to have been outed by a CBS News report, which was later retracted. Then a 17-year-old picture of a softball-playing Kagan published on the front page of The Wall Street Journal set off a flurry of speculation, as well as a national debate over whether playing softball signifies that a woman is gay. But the nominee’s pals have since piped up, denying that she lists to the ladies.

Is it anyone’s business? Depends whom you ask.

Walking into Ginger’s is to tread into stereotype (dark paneling, pool table, karaoke). Here, Kagan’s personal life matters mainly to militant older gals like 40-something Lori Maloney, who winced when a clutch of girls young enough to be her daughters walked into the bar, kissing. “They’re just showing off,” she fumed.

The fact that Kagan is a softball-playing New Yorker, too busy with her career to marry or have kids, meant nothing else to the younger set beyond endearing Kagan to them. “I think, who gives a [bleep]” what her sexual preference is, said Ginger’s patron Kristin Smith, 34.

In bars and living rooms from the West Coast to Park Slope, Kagan has tested the right of Americans to know the sexual details of one’s life. Such conversations are invariably coupled with a dollop of shame. Why should we care?

Mallary Jean Tenore of the Poynter Institute cares. “Why aren’t the mainstream media addressing an issue that the public wants to know more about?” she wrote last week.

The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan complained that the debate has been left to bloggers. “The mainstream media are squeamish on the matter of homosexual orientation, and need not be when we are dealing at this level of public life at this moment in the evolution of gay visibility,” he argued.

At Ginger’s, younger gals who grew up comfortable with homosexuality said it doesn’t matter what Kagan’s preference is. Older ones believe that if Kagan is not being honest, it could damage gay rights for all.

Gay, straight or none of the above, she’ll always be precious to mohawked Lori Schembri, 50, who came out of the closet after 21 years of marriage and three kids. To her, the softball thing is a giveaway.

Angela Cooper, 32, warned that if Kagan is gay, “I’d wait [to come out until] after I was on the bench. Then do a little dance!”

Then they all joined in karaoke, which is where I draw the line.

Among the softball players of Brooklyn, Elena Kagan will always be one of the girls.

SMEARS PUT COPS IN NO-WIN DILEMMA

After two recent horror shows — the attempted Times Square bombing and the Staten Island Ferry crash — I was struck by the large number of visitors to our city, of all races and ages, who expressed amazement at the professionalism and courtesy of police.

So, did an activist group, coupled with its boosters at The New York Times, gang up on the men and women who keep us safe?

A front-page Times story last week detailed a study by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which concluded blacks and Latinos were nine times as likely as whites to be stopped by police last year, but no more apt to be arrested. An outrage! Grounds for a suit!

Only on an inside page did cops explain that the higher number of stops are the result of police flooding high-crime areas. And, the data collected even from non-arrests is crucial to fighting future crime.

“The article is meant to be inflammatory in terms of stirring emotions against us,” said a cop I know. He explained that the proportion of minorities who are stopped and frisked actually matches the races of people who commit crime.

But the article is “purposely making it sound as if we are stopping people for no reason and making excuses just to harass the minority population. Nothing can be further from the truth.”

“Slowly, special-interest groups and the mainstream media are trying to take away our ability to do our jobs effectively, which will result in a return to crime statistics not seen since the ’80s and early ’90s,” the cop said. “And guess who they will blame?

“They’ll say we’re not doing our job.”

Truer words were never spoken.


$5 Bill not worth a lot

Bill Clinton wants a date. That’s right, I’m one of millions of Democrats invited to pay off the debt remaining from millionaire Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. For a $5 donation, I get a shot at the grand prize — a day in New York with the ex-president!

I’m guessing the second prize is two days.

It seems Bill will do anything to get out of the house.

Bill to Hillary: “How was your day?”

Hillary to Bill: “I stopped a terrorist attack in the morning, had lunch with the president, then tea with the head honcho of China. Then we all went out for Jell-O shots at T.G.I. Friday’s. How was your day?”

Bill: “I mastered Twitter.”

Five bucks isn’t too much to cheer up Bill.

A-Rod’s love double play

These dames have money, beauty and fame. Now all Kate Hudson and Cameron Diaz need is a pair of hot guys.

A vicious catfight has erupted between Hollywood’s leading blondes over Yankee slugger Alex Rodriguez. Kate is mad that Cameron has her hooks in her ex-squeeze. Cam is said to be exacting revenge because Kate once hitched her tresses to the bedpost of the Camster’s former love, Justin Timberlake.

Wealth and looks can’t buy happiness. Evidently, they also can’t attract two healthy, heterosexual males. Meowww!


Case closed

I bid good night to “Law and Order,” the cops-and-courts show that makes you believe that justice and good hair can prevail in this city in an hour or less.

I’ll miss the glamorous prosecutor gals clad in $2,000 suits. I’ll pine for crimes solved between commercial breaks. Too bad it was fiction.