is for Judy Garland.  Although Garland was in many ways a brilliant performer, homosexuals viewed her simply as the catalyst for the raucous, gay pride "love-ins" that erupted spontaneously during her concerts.  Her uncritical mass appeal helped overcome our fragmentation to create for only a few hours, within the safe confines of an auditorium, an ephemeral, transitory "community" that lured us out of the closets in order to experience the unforgettable thrill of a public celebration of homosexuality.  Those commentators who insist on trying to explain gay diva worship exclusively on the basis of the intrinsic appeal of a particular star -- as a result of her pathos, suffering, vulnerability, glamor, or sexiness, to give only a few of the reasons that have been offered -- have in many ways chosen as their starting point a mistaken premise.  The answer to the proverbial question "why did gay men like Judy Garland so much?" is that they liked, not her, so much as her audience, the hordes of other gay men who gathered in her name to hear her poignant renditions of old torch songs that reduced sniffling queens to floods of self-pitying tears.