This is getting silly. And sad. Put a microphone under the mouth of a conservative and he/she will spout out theories that can’t even pass the smell test. From porno equaling gay and same sex marriage being a talking point for the socialist revolution, conservatives have harangued us for the past few days. Well let’s end the week with a former child actor going a few rounds with Charles Darwin.

Kirk Cameron, whose last decent project was Growing Pains (and the show wasn’t all that), is taking on Darwin’s The Origin of Species. According to Cameron the book is the reason why so many people are atheists and he isn’t about to let that influence continue.

“Atheism has been on the rise for years now, and the Bible of the atheists is ‘The Origin of Species,’” Cameron said. “We have a situation in our country where young people are entering college with a belief in God and exiting with that faith being stripped and shredded. What we want to do is have students make an informed, educated decision before they chuck their faith.”

Cameron should be a little bit more honest, but I assume as a no talent hack veracity isn’t a strength. The “educated decision” of college students is not his care. He would rather everyone pray to his God. Makes life a whole lot easier.

As for atheism being on the rise, it is of course more complicated than that, but why would Cameron feel a need to go into details? They always frustrate the crazy.

The double Oscar winner filed the petition on April 23 in Marin County Superior Court in San Rafael, Calif., according to court papers.

The couple married in April 1996. Penn has requested joint legal and physical custody of their 18-year-old daughter, Dylan Francis, and 15-year-old son, Hopper Jack.

This isn’t the first indication of marital strife. The Penns filed for divorce in December 2007 but dismissed their petition several months later.

They attended the Academy Awards together in February. Penn, 48, won an Oscar for his role in the drama “Milk,” and neglected to thank his wife in his acceptance speech.

Calls to the couple’s representative, Mara Buxbaum, and Penn’s lawyer, Mindy Lauren Ross, were not immediately returned.

A hearing has been scheduled for Aug. 21, according to the Marin County Superior Court Web site.

Penn met Wright on the set of the 1990 Irish mob movie “State of Grace.” The famously brooding actor, who previously married and divorced first wife Madonna, seemed to find the yin to his yang in the luminous actress, whose serene demeanor tempered his macho swagger. Wright, who was married once before to former soap star Dane Witherspoon, has said Penn helped her gain confidence and stand up for herself.

Penn launched his acclaimed acting career as the stoned surfer dude Jeff Spicoli in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” His other, much heavier, roles include “Dead Man Walking,” “21 Grams,” “I Am Sam,” “All the King’s Men” and “Mystic River,” for which he won a best actor Oscar in 2004.

Penn’s second trophy came after he showed surprising warmth and humor as slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk. Despite his reputation as a serious actor, he recently agreed to play Larry in the Farrelly brothers’ big-screen update of “The Three Stooges.”

He has also directed several films, including 2007’s “Into the Wild” and 1995’s “The Crossing Guard,” which co-starred Wright and Jack Nicholson.

Wright, 43, is best known for her role in “The Princess Bride” in 1987 and “Forrest Gump” in 1994 opposite Tom Hanks. Her other credits include “Beowulf,” “Breaking and Entering” and the new Russell Crowe drama “State of Play.”

Comic Dave Chappelle is right. Too much ink is wasted over the political yammering of the famous. If singing and dancing is your forte, that is what I require when you open your mouth. Your thoughts on the topic of the day not so much. Today that rule will be broken to announce that from now until I’m some slobbering dirty old man pinching the backside of an overworked nurse, I’ll be the first in line for any Hugh Jackman movie.

Rumors about the Aussie star’s sexuality have been up for public debate (please do me a favor: don’t leave notes about how your best friend’s third cousin is Jackman’s lovah or how your third cousin’s man saw him kissing someone at the Hangar). Why we care about his bed mate(s) is beyond me, but what do I know? Heck I even can’t stand Twitter.

But here is how Jackman responded when pressed to answer the gossip:

“I’d be happy to go and deny it, because I’m not,” Jackman said. “But by denying it, I’m saying there is something shameful about it, and there isn’t anything shameful. The questions about sexuality I find more here in America than anywhere else, because it’s a big hang-up and defines what people think about themselves and others. It’s not a big issue in Australia.”

While your third cousin’s mate will be annoyed by this, it made my day. Made me fall in love a little bit. In a purely platonic way. Wrecking homes is for nasty girls and my parents raised me to be a lady.

Jackman has a new movie coming out and although he doesn’t need my cash he’s getting it. I can’t think of a better guy to give it to (excluding me of course).

Many celebrities grieved the passing of Proposition 8 in California this week. Some – such as Wanda Sykes, Rose McGowan and Lance Bass – attended a Wednesday protest criticizing the state’s gay marriage ban. Others – like Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O’Donnell, Madonna and Melissa Etheridge – vented their frustrations online, on TV, and onstage.

Blocks away from the Thursday rally of more than 2,000 gay-rights advocates outside the gates of a Mormon temple, several stars – including James Cromwell, Patricia Clarkson, Anjelica Huston and Sean Penn – said they supported the protesters while walking the red carpet at the BAFTA L.A. Brittania Awards at Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel.

“I think it might be an idea to go out and join them shortly,” Penn said. “It was a shameful decision that was made.”

Etheridge, who exchanged vows with her longtime partner in a 2003 ceremony, declared in a blog entry posted Thursday on TheDailyBeast.com that she wouldn’t pay her taxes. The gay Oscar- and Grammy-winning singer-songwriter said that without the right to marry in California, she didn’t think she should have to pay taxes because “I am not a full citizen.”

“I don’t mean to get too personal here,” Etheridge wrote. “But there is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California. Oh, and I am sure Ellen will be a little excited to keep her bazillion bucks that she pays in taxes, too.”

DeGeneres, on her show and the show’s Web site, provided a brief message of support Friday for President-elect Obama and the gay-rights advocates protesting Proposition 8. The talk show host, who married actress Portia de Rossi in August, previously donated $100,000 against the ballot initiative and starred in a commercial lamenting the measure.

“So there was a demonstration here on Wednesday night,” DeGeneres told the audience, “and just before I walked out here, I was watching the news and there is a huge, huge, peaceful demonstration going on in the streets, and I say, good for you, and I support you, and if I weren’t here, I’d be out there with you.”

O’Donnell, who lives in New York, responded to comments and questions about her stance on the issue on her Web site. When one person said he understood why she didn’t come out against the proposition, O’Donnell responded: “I AM AGAINST PROP 8. DUH.” She also wrote she believes the estimated 18,000 gay marriages would be annulled “like mine was years ago.”

The former talk show host, who lives with partner Kelli Carpenter and their four children, publicly wed Carpenter in San Francisco in 2004, two weeks after Mayor Gavin Newsom authorized granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The licenses were later voided by the California Supreme Court.

Also ranting online was celebrity disc jockey Samantha Ronson. Lindsay Lohan’s gal pal blogged Thursday that she was shocked that California voters approved an animal-rights initiative but that ballot measures about gay marriage and adoption in California, Florida, Arizona and Arkansas were shot down.

“I guess people care more about farm animals than they do their fellow man, that’s really sad to me,” Ronson wrote on her MySpace blog. “Yes, I am glad that the chickens will have more room and better conditions as they wait to die, but I just think it’s frightening that people show more compassion for tomorrow’s dinner than for the chef.”

Other celebs used time in the spotlight to decry the decision. Madonna took a moment during her concert at Dodger Stadium to declare to the audience that she was sad “because African-Americans are equal finally, but gay marriage is not.”

Singer Christina Aguilera also spoke out against the ban.

“I think it’s discrimination,” Aguilera said in a Thursday interview with MTV News. “I don’t understand how people can be so closed-minded and so judgmental. We chose an African-American president who means so much in a time in history of great change and open-mindedness. Why is this any different? It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

For one celebrity, voting on the ballot measure itself didn’t make sense. In a rambling message posted on her MySpace blog Friday, former Hole frontwoman Courtney Love wrote that the language on the California ballot “was confusing and people were voting yes when they meant no or something.”

The Yankees versus the Dodgers. Subways versus suburban sprawl. Hot dogs versus hummus. New York and Los Angeles are opposites in many ways.

Including, it is said, the way two of these town’s most famous entertainment industries — theater in New York, and TV and movies in Los Angeles — treat their openly gay and bisexual actors.

In the anything-goes world of theater, they say, it’s all about the work. But while the creative folks in the Hollywood movie and TV industry may be just as open-minded as their New York counter-parts, the financial stakes are higher — and they’re producing entertainment for more than just a liberal New York audience.

According to the conventional wisdom, this has made them far less accepting of actors who are out to the general public.

But is the conventional wisdom true? And even if it is, how have things changed in recent years?

In looking for answers, AfterElton.com turned to insiders in both New York and Los Angeles, as well as out TV and theater actors including Chad Allen, Mad Men’s Bryan Batt, Cheyenne Jackson, and Christopher Sieber.

City of Illusions

For decades after its founding as the movie capital of the world, there were no openly gay actors in Los Angeles.

“We live in such a different world today when everyone knows [about gay people],” says David Ehrenstein, author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood, 1928-1998.

“In the 30s, 40s, and 50s, “’gay’ was not talked about anywhere, ever, publicly. But if you were gay in show business, you were a hell of a lot better off than if you were a clerk back in Sheboygan. People worked at the studios all day, then they went home and lived their lives and no one bothered them.”

There were definitely arranged marriages and fake opposite-sex “dates” for gay actors, Ehrenstein says, but these were for the public’s benefit, not the Hollywood community, which practiced an early form of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

In the 1960s and 70s, flamboyant comedians such as Rip Taylor, Paul Lynde, Alan Sues, and Charles Nelson Reilly camped it up on television, displaying what seems, in retrospect, to be obviously stereotypically “gay” characteristics. But none of these actors were openly gay — Nelson Reilly finally came out a few years before his death in 2007 — and most of Middle America perceived them to be colorful eccentrics, not “gay” per se.

“Paul felt stigmatized by the industry about being gay,” Steve Wilson, one of the authors of Center Square: The Paul Lynde Story, told Salon.com. “He got very fed up with [Hollywood Squares] and after a while, through a combination of the writers getting more risqué as the ’70s wore on and Paul not caring one way or the other, he gradually let his guard down. Eventually, his gayness became incredibly obvious. His jokes came straight from gay culture, but mainstream America back then had practically nil exposure to that world.”

Everything changed in 1985, when Rock Hudson, formerly one of the biggest movie stars in the world and a strapping, supposedly heterosexual heartthrob, died of AIDS and was subsequently revealed to have been gay — something widely known in Hollywood circles.

“A big beloved star has his secret come out,” Ehrenstein says. “Everyone suddenly was given leave to discuss the idea of being closeted in Hollywood. That was the start of it, when the dam burst. You could no longer talk of ‘gay’ as this secret, shameful thing.”

Few Hollywood celebrities voluntarily came out in the years that followed — though British actors Ian McKellen and Rupert Everett were exceptions to that rule, coming out in 1988 and 1989, respectively.

Meanwhile, other gay actors were outed. Thorn Birds hunk Richard Chamberlain was revealed to be gay in a French magazine in 1989, though he didn’t actually come out until his 2003 autobiography, Shattered Love, in which he writes that he felt it necessary to stay closeted to protect his career. (Chamberlain declined to speak with AfterElton.com.)

Next Page! Those tabloid rumors about Kevin Spacey!