I can't speak for heterosexuals, because I don't go trolling in heterosexual chat rooms. But judging by the steamy names of the chat rooms, they are also a pretty horny bunch.

Evidently, so is prominent gay editor, author and columnist Andrew Sullivan, who advertised for sex on AOL and on a sex Web site. Horrors. Sullivan, the stalwart gay conservative who has been an outspoken critic about what he decries as loose gay morals, irresponsible sex, excessive AIDS activist tactics and so on, was outed for his outré sexual preferences by several gay journalists last week, in what has become a media firestorm.

The author of the most extensive exposé, Michelangelo Signorile, has had a longstanding feud with Sullivan, and decided to expose his enemy's alleged hypocrisy in a cover story in a local New York gay publication, LGNY. He revealed Sullivan's AOL sex handle as well as savory details of a more raunchy sex ad on a gay Web site, where he was looking for partners who were also HIV positive and didn't want to use a condom. And he quoted anonymous sources who reported having had sex with Sullivan, linking him to the said nasty sex ad and AOL handle.

Like all juicy stories in our sex-celebrity-Internet age, the story has metastasized.

The first mention of Sullivan's private life was actually a paragraph by Michael Musto, two weeks ago, in the Village Voice. Then came Signorile's LGNY story. Jim Romenesko's Media News picked it up, but it was a New York Post story, following on LGNY's, that forced Sullivan to finally issue a defiant defense, after two weeks, on his own Web site. Wednesday, Inside.com reported on the flap.

Meanwhile, a third gay journalist was working to expose Sullivan: David Ehrenstein, a Los Angeles writer who, like Signorile, has been at odds with Sullivan over his moralizing. Ehrenstein, out of pique over what he saw as Sullivan's sexual double standards, in early May alerted editors at Salon.com and the Washington Post, among others, to Sullivan's sex handle and personal ad.

"In light of Andrew Sullivan's constributions (sic) to 'Salon,'" Ehrenstein wrote, "I think you should be made aware of the following information, currently circulating 'round the 'net. I warn you that it is blunt. But then so is Sullivan." The e-mail included what was apparently Sullivan's own posting on a gay sex site, and added: "I am, needless to say, not a disinterested observer. Mr. Sullivan and I have -- as they say 'had issues' in the past."

Well, I also have ideological differences with Sullivan. I am a gay, left-liberal, vegetarian Californian, and I often disagree with the Tory Catholic Sullivan. But however conservative Sullivan is, or how much he may moralize in ways that are different than me, he is entitled to sexual privacy. He acted confidentially, as most of us do, in good faith, online. He chose not to use his name or post a picture. Yet his adversaries decided to drag his most private sexual behavior through the town square for derision, to punish him for his political views.

As I read Signorile's story about Sullivan's alleged double life, and the excruciatingly detailed description of his online ad, I was pained at the violation of his privacy, and the obvious attempt to shame him. "It's almost enough to make you cry," a senior editor at the New York Times told me. Whatever discrepancies may exist between Sullivan's public words and private actions don't justify his abuse -- and I do see it as abuse, vendetta masquerading as advocacy journalism. Sullivan calls it "sexual McCarthyism," and many agree.

Indeed, some journalists passed on doing the Sullivan story. "I had to take the test of who does this affect, who is this relevant to. My conclusion is: It affects Andrew Sullivan only," says National Public Radio's Jon Beaupre, who has been president of the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association for two years. "People may disapprove of Sullivan or his behavior, but in the final analysis the main reason that people were pushing to cover this story was for scurrilous reasons, and I couldn't justify that."

It is Sullivan's preeminence as gay spokesman, as much as his beliefs, that have made him vulnerable to attack, says Bill Ervolino, Signorile's first editor at Nightlife magazine, who now writes a column for Bergen's The Record. "Sullivan has long been an object of scorn by members of the gay community who covet the attention he receives by the media, resent that he is far more conservative than most gay Americans would admit to being, and resent that he is the only gay spokesman who really matters on television," says Ervolino.

But Ehrenstein insists Sullivan deserves the scrutiny, and the attacks, because he has set himself up as a gay spokesman. "You've heard of head nigger in charge, going back to whole slavery thing. Well, Sullivan has become Head Faggot in Charge, and what better place to do that than at the New York Times," he says. "This has to do with a specific industry and a history, and with his statements about sexuality. This is not just Joe Gay Person."

Michael Musto agrees. "It was such a major case of sexual hypocrisy that I thought it was worthy of reporting. Sullivan for years has railed against Clinton for sexual indiscretions. He said that Clinton needed psychiatric help." In fact, while Sullivan was harshly critical of Clinton for his "reckless" behavior in the Lewinsky mess, he also attacked Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr for the "scolding, moralizing conservatism" of the lurid Starr Report and of the entire "Lewinsky Kulturkampf."

And while detractors call Sullivan a hypocrite, and use that as a defense for exposing his private sexual behavior, I cringe at the word. First of all, it implies that he believes one thing but purposely acts in a contradictory way. And there's no proof of that. Sullivan's writings about sex and relationships have always been complex, sometimes even contradictory. They've evolved over the years. He has certainly promoted gay marriage and monogamy; he has also defended the freedom and intimacy of unprotected sex with another HIV-positive lover.

At any rate, I defend Sullivan's right to his contradictions. I have felt and seen in myself discrepancies between my intentions and my actions, between what I most deeply feel and what I have at times said or done, in moments of human frailty, fear or need.

Salon Politics: Unflinching daily political news, analysis and commentary.