US News

Chaz a real drag for gay community

For some folks in the gay community, “Becoming Chaz” is unbecoming.

The man known as Chaz was born Chastity Bono, the cutie-pie daughter of scenery-chewing singing duo Sonny and Cher. Chastity grew into a depressed, pill-popping woman, traumatized by her Republican father’s death in a skiing accident, and overshadowed into invisibility by her gay-icon mother. There was only one thing to do.

Sex change.

Now — to her mom’s horror and the dismay of her lesbian girlfriend — she’s transformed. Chastity has morphed into the body of a plump, seemingly happy-go-lucky, middle-aged guy named Chaz.

At 42, Chaz is a new man, in more ways than one. He has become a one-human sex-change industry — evangelizing, normalizing and selling the notion that messing with one’s gender identity is a reasonable choice for folks who, let’s face it, might benefit from day jobs.

Chaz stars in a documentary, “Becoming Chaz,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to maximum buzz, and was snapped up by Oprah Winfrey’s OWN network.

He has a book coming out about becoming a man, “Transition.” Last week, Chaz sat, smiling, next to a jumpy and weirded-out David Letterman. Oprah introduced the affable Chaz to her viewers with all the freakish distance she summoned to exploit the lady mauled by a chimp.

Emboldened by the attention, Chaz this month invited Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to talk about gender-identity issues displayed by their 4-year-old daughter, Shiloh, who likes to wear boys’ clothes. Brangelina, wisely, have not replied.

Yet Chaz has made inroads with straights. A conservative colleague told me, “He’s a brave young man.”

But in the gay universe, a debate rages over whether Chaz is the well-adjusted guy he claims to be. Or is Chaz — who’s chosen a four-letter persona strikingly similar that of his one-named mother, Cher — using his stardom to work out long-standing mommy issues?

Is Chaz’s sex-change a stab in Cher’s heart?

Referring to Chaz as “she” and “her,” the gay-oriented DataLounge.com Web site issued a slam.

“Whatever your opinion of her recent surgeries and hormone intake, Chaz Bono says that she is no longer a gay woman, but is, rather, a straight man. Congratulations!” wrote DataLounge.

“Her presence will do nothing but confuse and alienate. For example, we are fighting to be allowed to get married. She can get married. Our agenda is no longer hers, but, because she likes the attention and the catering, she’s not gonna go anywhere. What can we do?”

Even The New York Times — which last year published 40 articles celebrating transgendered folks versus zero honoring the US military — questioned Chaz’s motives.

“Could it be possible that the fact that Chaz is now a man is somehow Cher’s fault?” the paper asked. “Did Cher’s almost drag queen-like hyper-female persona somehow devour Chastity’s emerging femininity?”

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, normally the last word on gay issues, has been pointedly mum. But my pals in the Stonewall Veterans Association — who started the gay-rights movement in 1969 when they stood up to cops raiding a Greenwich Village gay bar — piped up.

“Chaz B’s appearance and persona is now male. He’s in drag!” said Williamson Henderson, founder of the Stonewall group. “Paraphrasing an appropriate Britney Spears song, ‘He’s more than a woman but not quite a man,’ ” said Henderson, alluding to Chaz’s reluctance to undergo an operation to finish the job, and create male sex organs.

Which leads to a ticklish question: What is a transgender person?

The American Psychiatric Association asserts it is a “mental” disorder, not “medical.” This isn’t far from the Catholic Church, which in 2000 declared trangenderism is a form of mental illness — although the Vatican said a sex change could be acceptable, in extreme cases, to cure a patient’s inner turmoil.

Is Chaz really a man? People wiser than I will decide. But I believe that hyping sex change as a magic cure for one’s problems won’t help kids struggling with their parents, their bodies and their sexuality.

Give it a rest.

Trimming ‘Big Willie Style’ back down to size

What could Will Smith possibly do inside a $9,000-a-week, 1,150-square-foot, double-decker trailer parked in the middle of SoHo?

Learn his lines? Wax his legs? Ice skate?

The actor royally ticked off neighbors and Mayor Bloomberg by idling a monster truck nearly as big as his ego — equipped with marble floors, gym and screening room — in the heart of the bustling neighborhood while filming “Men in Black III.” Smith was so obnoxiously cavalier about exercising his right to roll over the ‘hood, he finally was forced to put the beast in a nearby parking lot, and cram into far smaller digs.

“He ain’t real happy. It’s an inconvenience,” said a source close to the Hollywood brat.

Many folks will find it inconvenient to spend another dime to watch his flicks.

This will fix Lohan – not

I dream of the day Lindsay Lohan fades away.

Having pleaded no contest to grand theft necklace, La Linz, I’m certain, will straighten up and fly right. Now that she’s set to serve her 120-day sentence (minus time for “good behavior”) not in jail, but behind the comfy walls of her house, Lindsay will magically go sober.

She’ll never again take a drug or a drink, swipe a $2,500 bauble, or drive a car under the influence.

She won’t tell cops a “black kid” was driving when she shouldn’t have been driving, or say that jeans she’s wearing, with a pocket full of cocaine, don’t belong to her.

In my dreams.


JUSTICE, TOO, HAS DIED

Five years is a pittance for the murder of 28,060 people. Yet that’s the sentence a German court handed John Demjanjuk, a guard at a Polish death camp, later an Ohio auto worker, convicted of being an “accessory” to mass murder. He was once sentenced to hang for helping slaughter tens of thousands of Jews during World War II.

This time, Demjanjuk, 91, will be free pending a possible appeal, and likely will die a comfortable death in his bed. Sleep well. You got away with it.


Waiting for the crazy train

If retired MTA employee Robert Fitzpatrick is right, and the world ends this Saturday, May 21, then what’s the point of getting up for work?

Fitzpatrick plunged
$140,000 into an ad campaign to warn New Yorkers about the approaching apocalypse.
However, given the MTA’s track record of predicting which trains will travel on schedule, I’m not holding my breath.