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Today's Page Six previews W's upcoming story on the rapidly growing membership of the all-female Velvet Mob splinter group the magazine has dubbed the Rubyfruit Mafia, a faction whose influence grows each time one of the industry's power-lesbians makes the brave choice to step out of the closet:

THE lesbians of Hollywood seem to be multiplying as they come out of the closet. "Call them the Rubyfruit Mafia," W magazine says in its latest issue. Movie producer Nina Jacobson said she didn't know of one other openly lesbian executive in Los Angeles in the early '90s when she told a colleague at Universal Studios, "I actually am not straight."

Jacobson, who now has three children with her lesbian partner, said, "It was certainly an acceptable choice to be closeted then. Now, in Hollywood, it would be a little pathetic. You would only look afraid." W reporter Kevin West also names HBO's head of programming Carolyn Strauss, Fox 2000 executive v.p. of production Carla Hacken, Sundance Institute's Cynthia Wornham, and "The L Word" creator Ilene Chaiken. Chaiken succeeded in pitching the series to Showtime's development executive Mark Zakarin after describing the characters, their relationships and some of the "arcane sociology of lesbian life, like the hotly debated question of whether you have to buy a new dildo when you get a new girlfriend."

While the piece will surely raise the Rubyfruit Mafia's profile in mainstream Hollywood, the Sapphic gang should further consolidate its power with a more dramatic demonstration of its potency. Perhaps it's time that Nina Jacobson, defying a direct order from gay-mob boss David Geffen, to finally put out that long-delayed hit on Disney chairman Dick Cook, serving an ice-cold dish of revenge for his delivery-room firing of Jacobson while her partner was giving birth. Such a chilling revenge-slaying would certainly deliver the message that fucking with any made member of the Rubyfruit Family carries severe consequences.