Are BL Lac objects too large to be gravitationally lensed?

BL LACERTAEobjects are extragalactic sources, generally of low redshift, with highly variable, strongly polarized continuum emission ranging from radio wavelengths to X-rays, but with little or no evidence of line emission. It has been suggested¹that BL Lacs are in fact more distant radio-loud, optically violently variable (OVV) quasars whose continuum is enhanced, relative to the line emission, by gravitational lensing caused by a star in an intervening galaxy. I argue here, however, that the spectral similarity of BL Lacs and OWs over a wide wavelength range can be explained by gravitational lensing only if the continuum-emitting region is small, a requirement that is contradicted by independent observations.