COTTAGE INDUSTRY: U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, post-wide stance.

Kirby Dick isn’t saying Charlie Crist is gay, but…he’s definitely saying Charlie Crist is gay. The charge won’t come as any surprise to the informed citizens of Florida, where Crist is the Republican governor. For one thing, the state is shaped like a penis, and what does that tell you? For another, Broward-Palm Beach News Times reporter Bob Norman has repeatedly dug up male political staffers who claim longstanding affairs with the governor, who then has to go on talk radio and say again that he has no problem with homosexuals but, personally, he prefers those lovely lady bits, if you know what I mean, boys, heh heh. Oh, and Florida will continue being the only U.S. state to ban gay adoption.

Crist is going to be putting in a lot of drive time after Kirby Dick’s Outrage, which uses the guv as a principal wedge in an effort to pry open the Republican closet. Dick, a filmmaker whose works (including the MPAA exposé This Picture Is Not Yet Rated) are less documentaries than muckraking polemics, is not a chap you want on your trail: He has Hunter S. Thompson’s knack for dogging hypocrites. His new movie reveals a number of open secrets—along with Crist, it “outs” former New York City mayor Ed Koch, California Congressman David Drier and Fox News anchor Shepard Smith—which might give undecided voters pause, if they ever sat through the film. They probably won’t, though, because Kirby Dick, for all his reporting skill, can’t resist the partisan urge to divide political figures into good gays and bad gays.

Dick’s main point is persuasive: Republican pols who remain closeted are discharging their self-loathing by blocking civil rights. But then why does he go after Mary Cheney, who is openly gay even as she continues to work for her father (another fellow named Dick)? It’s not enough for Outrage that gay Republicans be honest—they also have to stop being Republicans. If Gov. Crist were to come out (and divorce his wife, acquired just before John McCain announced his VP pick), he would not only forfeit his scanty chance for a spot on a national GOP ticket but would have to leave the party altogether. One is left with the suspicion that Kirby Dick would be gratified by all of these outcomes. A saner conciliation might be good for the Union, but it would do no favors for Dick’s filmmaking career, which is focused less on the closet than on the pachyderm boogeyman hiding under the bed.