This week’s Loose Lips column features a fascinating look at contemporary gay and lesbian politics in the District. The dropback for the piece was this week’s endorsement forum of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the “voice of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered citizens in the Democratic Party in Washington, DC.”

The forum is a great opportunity for activists to grill candidates on the wide range of extremely worthy issues on the Stein agenda, such as gay marriage. On that front, as WCPer Mike DeBonis reported, Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander took quite a beating, showing an ambivalence on the topic that the activists pounced upon. In the end, Alexander relented, saying, “I guess I’m in support of it; I’m in support of equal rights.”

Gay marriage, meet male strip clubs.

Longtime city gay activist Rick Rosendall proceeded to hammer Alexander on the lamest of all possible issues—Alexander’s support for stopping the relocation of male strip joints from the baseball district to Ward 5. As DeBonis explained, Alexander’s position on the matter is one of deference to the Ward 5 councilmember, Harry Thomas Jr. But Rosendall couldn’t possibly stomach a councilmember not getting behind the facilitation of strip-club mobility, screaming that Alexander had “betrayed us” on the relo thing.

Why? Because strip clubs suck. They’re ugly, they’re boring, their customers are boring and lugheaded. The places are blights on the urban landscape, in part because they have no windows or if they do have windows, they’re all covered up, and the people in front of those windows are generally stiffs—big self-important bouncers. The shit that goes down in the strip clubs is lame and not worth fighting for and certainly not something that should affect the assessment of a councilmember.

And it’s great to see that the Stein Club apparently feels this way: They voted 36-3 in favor of Alexander.