Eminem Asks, What Makes Someone Gay?

Here are the lyrics to the middle stanza of “Rain Man”:

Now in the Bible it says
thou shall now watch two lesbians in bed
have homosexual sex
unless of course you were given the consent to join in
then of course it’s intercourse and it bisexual sex
which isn’t as bad as long as you show some remorse for your actions
either before, during, or after performing the act of that which
is normally referred to as such more commonly known phrases
that are more used by today’s kids
in a more derogatory way
but who’s to say what’s fair to say and what not to say
let’s ask Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre (what up?)
I got a question if i may (yea)
is it gay to play putt putt golf with a friend (yea)
and watch his butt butt when he tees off (yea)
but but i aint done yet
in football a quarterback yells out hut hut
while he reaches in another grown man’s ass
grabs on his nuts, but just what if
it was never meant, it was just an accident
but he tripped, fell, slipped and his penis went in
his teeny, tiny, little, round hiney
and he didn’t mean it but his little weenie flinched just a little bit
and I don’t need to go into any more details
but what if he pictured it as a female’s butt
is that gay? I just need to clear things up
til then I’ll just walk around with a manly strut because…

Is homosexuality defined by a physical act, or is it defined by the thought process behind that act? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that brought up in music before by any artist, gay or straight.

To hear Eminem rap about the “tiny, little round hiney” and the “flinching weenie” and introduce a discussion of homosexual anal sex (a topic that threatens most hetero masculine egos) is pretty out there. It addresses the concept of the Down Low, gays who see themselves as “Str8”, and machismo all at once. It calls out the hypocrites who do one thing and call it another.

Extemporating on mature concepts in fifth-grade dialect dreamt into utterly sophisticated rhyming sequences is the brilliance of Eminem. Is he a homophobe at heart? Who knows? But he asks some pretty “probing” questions for a straight rapper.

Eminem’s Encore