Despite unfolding as it did during the sexual revolution of the 1920s, Leopold and Loeb's "trial of the century" elicited a deluge of constitutive discourse that struggled against overt articulation and circulation of the boys queerness. In this essay, I argue that those discourses--dominant reportage, in camera courtroom conferences, and Clarence Darrow's famous summation--manifested what I label "passing by proxy," a collusive and convulsive act of straight closeting that speaks queer sexuality despite concerted effort to silence it. (Contains 103 endnotes.)