Oprah Winfrey speaking in a broadcast preview of her XM radio show airing now (channel 156) about how she met her friend Gayle King:

When I was 22 years old and working as a TV anchor in Baltimore, there was a young production assistant in the newsroom, Gayle King. One night there was a snowstorm and she couldn't get home. I said, "Hey, you can spend the night at my house." She said, "I don't have any panties." I said, "Well, I do. I have clean panties, and once I give 'em to you, you don't have to give 'em back."

• While some "subjects" of Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days – where he takes a person ignorant of a certain way of life and immerses him in it for a month – have "relapsed," straight conservative youth minister Ryan Hickmott has not. After spending 30 days in San Francisco with a gay couple, he's still living his life under the notion that we're all equals. [Knoxville News Sentinel]

• Documentation of Kathy Griffin's lesbian past — and far too many words devoted to a love-hate relationship with her. [Pretty Scary]

• If you're a comic geek, then we'll probably find you this weekend in San Diego at Comic Con — and not giving a crap what Hollywood's trades have to say. [HWT]

• If Gayle King and Oprah aren't lesbian lovers, then surely the daytime queen won't mind if her BFF takes someone else along to see Madonna. [Towleroad]

• Chocolate.com relaunches. Please don't think less of us when you walk in the room and we're licking our screens. [Chocolate.com]

• In commemmorating last year's hangings of two Iranian teens for being gay, the Washington Post runs afoul of the very rules of media coverage it criticizes. [Washington Blade]

In the August issue of O: The Oprah Magazine, daytime's reigning queen took some column inches to address those little rumors that she and BFF Gayle King are an item. They're not, Oprah will have you know, but not that there's anything wrong with that. And while we're equally interested in her thoughts about Stedman Graham's orientation speculation, Oprah uses the rational of "there's nothing wrong with being gay" to explain why, if she and Gayle were together, they would come out.

She said she can see why people think they're an item, because they're always together.

She said people ask, "How can you be this close without it being sexual?” But she said it's not. She said the problem is "there isn't a definition in our culture for this kind of bond between women."

Actually, there is: It's called "obnoxious."

Oprah: Gayle And I Are Friends, Not Lesbian Lovers [AP]

• Oprah insists she and Gayle King aren't gay, damnit. [QueerBeacon]

• How many professional athletes are gay? We may never know, but it's fun to speculate. [Blogcritics]

• The Sopranos' Joseph Gannascoli, who played the gay character Vito, is being sued by diet company Stacker 2 on charges he didn't do enough to promote the drug. Gannascoli's take: They didn't like him being gay on TV. [AP]

• If AIDS never exisited, what would life be like? [SoVo]