Yes, you read correctly – famous former Camel cigarette mascot Joe Camel is gay. Boy, bet that really makes you feel bad about that lawsuit that barred Joe Camel from being used in cigarette advertisements, huh, you homophobes?

Frankly, I'm ashamed it took this long for him to come out. We had always dreamed of an openly gay Joe Camel, but the country simply was not ready for a camel that loved his same sex almost as much as he loved the smooth taste of filtered tobacco. You should have seen the original art we had inked. Joe was wearing an incredibly sexy feather boa and very revealing jean shorts, marching hand in hand down St. Marks Place with his live-in boyfriend, Steve the Turtle. Everyone at Camel was proud of Joe and accepted him for who he was, but the values and prejudices of the times demanded we stuffed Joe back in the closet, hiding his sexuality behind an elegant suit, a pair of dark sunglasses, and a genuinely-tasting-and-never-boring cigarette dangling in his mouth.

I know what you're thinking – that you're just choosing to make Joe Camel gay to to boost slumping cigarette sales. Well, you don't choose to be gay. I'm shocked and offended you would even have the gall to think that. When JK Rowling said Dumbledore was gay, none of you demanded proof. What, you want to see Joe Camel blowing a stranger in the men's room of a Jack In The Box? Because we at Camel have thousands of those drawings. Seriously, show me a straight man with an oral fixation like Joe Camel, and I'll show you a guy I've blown in the men's room of a Jack In The Box.

No one is more sensitive to the influence Joe Camel had on children starting to smoke than I. And while Camel greatly appreciated the business of our illegal 12-17 year old customers, that's not why we want to bring Joe Camel back. This may come as a shock to you, it wasn't cigarettes we were selling to kids. It was gay pride. It was love. It was that smooth, ultra light tolerance of homosexuals that once you start you chemically cannot stop.

To tell a gay man – no, a gay camel – that he is not allowed to sell cigarettes is nothing short of a hate crime, and we're ready to take Joe's right to be a gay cigarette advertisement all the way to the Supreme Court. You know what I'm hooked on? Justice. You know what I'm addicted to? Marriage equality. You know what I smoke two packs a day of? Camel Cigarettes. Surrounded by all of my gay friends. Who all smoke because smoking is fun and cool.

No dice? Well, did you know Joe Camel is also trans? And a rape survivor? And a Latino Muslim? Come on, it's 2015. Don't be so cis-normative. I'm using that correctly, right?