So Suze Orman Is Gay, What Does That Have To Do with Financial Advice?

This story was originally published in QueerCents, a site devoted to "LGBT" financial advice.

Suze Orman is the most famous personal finance adviser in the world -- and she's as queer as a three dollar bill. To be fair, I'm sure Suze would prefer to be characterized in Euros or gold coins.

Orman came out of the closet this winter, after years of professional fame, in a "casual chat'" with Deborah Solomon at the New York Times. It appeared as if she'd made an impulsive decision on the eve of her new book's debut: Women and Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny.

Here's the turning point in her interview:

Are you married?

I'm in a relationship with life. My life is just out there. I'm on the road every day. I love my life.

Meaning what? Do you live with anyone?

K.T. is my life partner. K.T. stands for Kathy Travis. We're going on seven years. I have never been with a man in my whole life. I'm still a 55-year-old virgin.

Last, we got a taste ofSuze's righteousness, who can make a point that Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres might've neglected:

Would you like to get married to K.T.?

Yes. Absolutely. Both of us have millions of dollars in our name. It's killing me that upon my death, K.T. is going to lose 50 percent of everything I have to estate taxes. Or vice versa.

But I had a different reaction; I was curious to look at Orman's advice and see if there was something dyed-in-the-wool dykey about it. I believe there is.

Money and sex get confused with virtue, and virtue is a feminine trait. There is a great deal of belief among women that if they are "good" -- that is to say, modest and self-deferential in their needs, be they orgasmic or financial -- they' ll be rewarded with the status of respected wife and mother.

In Suze's new book she asks: "Why is it that women, who are so competent in all other areas of their lives, cannot find the same competence when it comes to matters of money?"

When Suze says "money," read: "men."

She promises to "investigate the complicated, dysfunctional relationship women have with money [i.e., men] in this groundbreaking new book."

Yeah, tell it, sister.

She calls on women to "save themselves."

When men get popular financial advice, there's a complete change of language. They don't get "saving" advice, they're told how to "invest."Most of them don't have to "save" themselves from financial dependency on women.

What Orman is saying, a tiny bit more openly, in her new book, is that she knows most women's money lives are defined by their dependence on men, be they husbands, lovers, or fathers. She is urging women, rhetorically, to cut it off.

I know the word "virtue" sounds old -fashioned -- but so is the urge to "find a man," and "have a baby" with said man. Those goals are more pressing than ever, as feminist philosophy becomes a novelty item.

In lesbian culture, there's no currency in being sexually virtuous. No one cares if you have slept with "X" number of women before you sleep with them -- not because they're so open-minded, but because there's no economic basis.

There's no "finding out whose baby this is."

Lesbian sexuality is not designed to answer any notion of virtue; it doesn't answer a patriarch's need. This is why Suze Orman is incredulous that straight women keep getting taken to the cleaners financially -- she is oblivious to the "call of virtue," not matter how many New Age platitudes she espouses.