Like all good cabals, the New York Times' contingent of gays has some known members-and other figures who remain in the shadows, the uncertainty adding to the paranoia of homophobic right-wingers.

Out Magazine, putting the Times' "gay mafia" at number 12 in its power list, names nine Times reporters and editors: Richard Berke, Ben Brantley, Frank Bruni, Stuart Elliot, Patrick Healy, Adam Nagourney, Horacio Silva, Stefano Tonchi, and Eric Wilson.

But Intelligencer's Chris Rovzar thinks the gay magazine has underestimated the true extent of the network. "But come on, Out editors - there are hordes of other gays working in high-powered positions at the Times. You could only come up with nine?" (The list does indeed omit Jeff Zeleny, Sewell Chan, Michael Barbaro, Jeremy Peters and Denny Lee, for instance.)

"Have you slept with no one lately?" asks Rovzar. The 27-year-old Intelligencer writer, pictured right, certainly has: willowy Rovzar's an expert on Times gays in part because he dated Patrick Healy and, by all accounts, broke the political reporter's heart. (Healy's to the left.) We don't feel particularly guilty exposing Healy's private life; he won the enmity of Hilary Clinton's campaign with his enthusiastic coverage of the candidate's problematic marriage.

Incidentally, all three national political reporters for the Times-Healy, Nagourney and Zeleny-are gay. Just saying, in case social conservatives need any more reason to question the political objectivity of the Gray Pink Lady.