As was made clear in the numerous obituaries and tributes, which all mentioned her striking appearance, Susan Sontag “was well aware of herself as a sexual being and used her image to transform herself from just another intellectual into a cultural icon,” observes Patrick Moore, the author of Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality . What’s more, he says, “Sontag’s lesbian relationships surely affected her work and our understanding of it.” Nonetheless, in the lavish, lengthy and detailed front page obituaries in The New York Times as well as the LA Times itself, “her relationships with women and how they shaped her thoughts on gay culture and the larger world of outsiders and outlaws (a Sontag fascination) were omitted,” notes Moore in a commentary from yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. “It seems that editors at what are, arguably, the nation’s most respected (and liberal) newspapers believe that one personal detail cannot be mentioned in even the most complete biographies — being a lesbian. . . . . The obituaries, remembrances and appreciations in New York and Los Angeles do anything but honor Sontag. They form a record that is, at best, incomplete and, at worst, knowingly false.”