Awhile back, I pointed out in Taki's that you can use Google's auto-completion prompts to quantify which celebrities the public suspects might be gay. Now, the NYT has a similar article:

Don’t Ask? Internet Still Tells 

By QUENTIN HARDY and MATT RICHTEL

Of course, being a respectable publication, the NYT has to fit this phenomenon into the approved "Who? Whom?" political framework:

So what might explain this apparent fascination with people’s sexual orientation? 

Ritch Savin-Williams, a professor at Cornell University who studies gay issues, said that the frequency of such inquiries is a symptom of the politicized nature of homosexuality. For instance, he said that people who are gay or who favor gay rights [i.e., Good People] might be looking for allies and like-minded people, while people who oppose such rights [i.e., Bad People] might be looking to demonize someone, whether a politician, athlete or actor.

There is also a third, unmentioned group: those who who like to understand how the world works. No doubt these weirdos comprise only a tiny minority, but that's one minority that is of no interest to the NYT, at least when it comes to Gay Issues.

By the way, I've since discovered that my Google Gaydar system works superbly well in another field of entertainment for identifying the performers' strategy for attracting a particular target audience. I'll have to write it up one of these days.