The 2017 Academy Awards: A Bad Night For Right Wingers

Last night's Academy Awards were not a happy event for much of the GOP base.  An Iranian won for best foreign film, black actors won awards and a gay drama won best picture.  then too there were numerous shots taken at Der Trumpenführer and his regime of lies.   Expect much whining that Hollywood is "out of touch" with real America.  Except, increasingly, it is not out of touch.  It's the GOP's "real Americans" and the minority who through a fluke put an unfit, mentally unstable narcissist in the White House who are out of touch with the majority of the country. Indeed, like their chosen leader, this minority is devoid of any empathy for those who are not just like them in terms of skin color, religious beliefs and seem unable to see the common humanity of others notwithstanding the religious posturing that so many engage in.  The Atlantic review of Moonlight looks at some of these aspects that the film brings to life for those willing to open their hearts and minds:

There’s insight to Moonlight that should pierce viewers to their core, even if Chiron’s life is very different from their own. This is not an “issue” film that’s mainly “about” race or sexuality; this is a humane movie, one that’s looking to prompt empathy and introspection most of all. On those terms alone, Moonlight is one of the year’s most gripping viewing experiences.

Moonlight veers away from the gritty stereotypes its setting might suggest; in fact, this film deliberately rejects the visual markers viewers might anticipate in such a tale. Liberty City is bright and often colorful, even at its most dilapidated. When Chiron is rescued by Juan (Mahershala Ali), one of the drug dealers shown cruising around in a vintage Cadillac, the boy is taken to Juan’s suburban-ish home, and later to the beach, where Juan cradles him in the water to try and teach him how to swim. Juan quickly realizes that Chiron doesn’t need to be forced or coddled into opening up emotionally—he just needs space to be himself. At every juncture, Juan tries to dissuade the boy from accepting whatever lot he’s handed by his tormenters, or by his crack-addicted mother Paula (a frightening, and wonderful, Naomie Harris).

There is tragedy at the heart of Moonlight, and the film is not an easy watch at times, partly because it delves so deeply into its protagonist’s haunted psyche. . . . . To say more would be to spoil a singular journey suffused with melancholy and hope, emotions that Jenkins communicates through the screen with uncommon grace. The result is a film that is one of the most essential of the year, and one whose depth rewards repeated viewings.

Needless to say, the modern day Pharisees at Focus on the Family are not pleased with the film and in part of a review states:

Moonlight is a well-made movie with an obvious agenda. Chiron, the film suggests, suffered mightily due to his sexual inclinations. Thus, the movie says, Chiron's life would've been so much better had his world been more accepting.

Christians who hold the Bible as the Word of God, of course, can't go where the movie would like to push us. We can't applaud where Chiron goes. . . . . As such, Moonlight, as mesmerizing as the movie is, isn't just filled with problematic content: It gives us a message counter to what we believe God tells us. 

The truth is that Focus on the Family focuses only on some families: those that are white, conservative Christian and heterosexual.  The rest of us don't matter and, worse yet, are to be marginalized and condemned.  WWJD? 

Spotlight Wins Best Picture

The one thing that I hope to see at the Academy Awards last night happened: the movie Spotlight won best picture.  To me, this is a hugely important movie and I urge readers who have not seen it to make a point of doing so.  Not only is the movie an indictment of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, but it also shows the importance of investigative journalism - something in all too short supply nowadays when reporters, especially in the political realm simply repeat the talking points of politicians and never bother to verify the real facts.  Demagogues flourish when investigative reporting is diminished. Please see this movie!

Hollywood’s Continued Diversity Problem

With the Academy Awards tonight, there will be much talk of Hollywood's diversity problem, with much focus on the lack of black actors among the nominees.  But in addition to the Academy's suggested racism is Hollywood's continued homophobia.  Both the Advocate and Towleroad look at the continued problem and point fingers at the system itself.  First, excerpts from The Advocate:

After the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the nominees for its 2016 Academy Awards, outrage followed. For the second year in a row, nominees in the four top acting categories (for best actor, actress, supporting actor, and supporting actress) are all white.

Charges of persistent racism spread like wildfire on social media in the #OscarsSoWhitecampaign. Jada Pinkett Smith, Spike Lee, and several other prominent people of color in the film and television industry vowed to boycott Sunday's Oscars ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles.

“These are all legitimate complaints,” says the Oscar-nominated actor Ian McKellen of the accusations of bigotry in Hollywood. McKellen suggests that actors of color aren't the only ones shut out of top honors. No openly gay man — including McKellen himself, twice nominated for an Academy Award, and one of our generation’s most impressive openly gay actors — has ever won an Oscar in the acting categories either. 

Commentators have taken Eddie Redmayne to task for playing a transgender woman in The Danish Girl. Redmayne, the film’s star, is a cisgender (nontrans), straight, white, British, Eton-educated actor who last year won a Best Actor Oscar for The Theory of Everything. For me, attacks against Redmayne seem similar to criticism of the Emmy-nominated transgender actress and advocate Laverne Cox for accepting the role of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the upcoming television restaging of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Advocacy and education can change the hearts and minds of liberals and conservatives alike. But, some will still hate certain kinds of marginalized people no matter what we say or do. That's why we need legal protections for all of us, even those that appear (often mistakenly) to lack the respectablity of the "model minorities." Moreover, all gender-variant people deserve protections, regardless of our identity and our expression — whether we're medically transitioning or cross-dressing. 

But, the attention paid to individual performers obscures the root of the issue. Just as I said in 1993, it's the system that's the real problem. The New York Times recently unpacked the considerable impediments to changing the Academy's system of voting and membership. Despite the influence of its (relatively new) black female president, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, and the advocacy of Phil Alden Robinson, a progressive white director who serves as the Academy’s secretary, the organization’s bylaws pointedly prevent changes to many of its voting procedures and membership rules. 

A new report from the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism found that the film and television industry is mired in an out-of-control “inclusion crisis.” The structure of the Academy epitomizes this crisis. Its voting members are 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and, on average, above the age of 63. And the bylaws of the organization appear designed to keep it that way.

Fundamentally, changing the composition of those in power is threatening to the powerful because it means that eventually they must share power with the very same people that they systematically ignored, excluded, or promoted only as tokens.

  Towleroad looks at the homophobia issue in particular:

What started as a reaction to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ failure to nominate any actors of color for the second year in a row has expanded into a broader conversation about minority representation in Hollywood.

As more voices have emerged in that conversation, additional attention has been paid to the inequity which the LGBT community faces in the industry. While the Academy failed to nominate any person of color this year for an acting Oscar, it also failed to nominate any openly LGBT actors. . . . Yet, three were nominated for playing LGBTQ characters: Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as lovers in Carol and Eddie Redmayne for playing a trans woman in The Danish Girl.”

And this year is not an isolated year of exclusion for LGBT actors, as O’Keeffe notes
In the 10 years since Crash beat Brokeback Mountain for the best picture Oscar, things have improved little for movies about trans or queer characters. Only four movies about LGBTQ protagonists have been nominated for best picture: Milk, The Kids Are All Right, The Imitation Game and Black Swan. (Dallas Buyers Club‘s protagonist, played by Matthew McConaughey, is straight.) That number looks all the lower in context.

Hollywood, it seems, has a big problem with the LGBT community; one of representation and inclusion. And some of Hollywood’s top talent agrees.

Academy Award-nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor recently commented that he thought it was “harder to be gay” than to be black in Hollywood. He told The Times, “Sexuality is still marginalized in a way that is pretty open. I think it’s tough.”

Ian McKellen went on record saying that the frustration felt by black actors in Hollywood is not so dissimilar from that felt by gay actors.

To rub salt in that already festering wound is another reality LGBT actors experience in Hollywood: when straight actors get cast to play gay characters, they’re called brave; when gay actors get cast to play straight characters, they’re called lucky.

On a personal note, I would like to add that much of what the statistics and stories shared by LGBT people in entertainment about Hollywood’s LGBT inclusivity problem rings true for me as someone who has worked in various roles in “the industry.” While there are voices of support in many corners—individuals who champion LGBT actors, business professionals and stories— the overarching hegemony is one which does not value actors coming out as L, G, B or T, marginalizes and pigeonholes actors who are out, and ghettoizes LGBT stories, treating them as universally “edgy”, “controversial”, “risky” and “dangerous.”
 

Lady Gaga’s Dazzling Second Act

I will not try to pretend that I am not a huge fan of Lady Gaga.  While I liked some of her early hits, I became a die hard fan at the National Equality March in the fall of 2009 when she spoke to the gathered crowd of well over 250,000 attendees (see the photo above).  Thanks to my press credentials for The Bilerico Project, the husband and I got to hear her speak from about 20 feet away. And that was hardly the first or last of her efforts on behalf of the LGBT community.  But I digress.  Now, Gaga, who some labeled as a "has been" has silenced her critics and risen like a phoenix and shown her talents to a far wider audience.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the phenomenon.   Here are excerpts:

Lady Gaga might be pop culture’s most surprising phoenix.  It wasn’t even a year ago that we had ruled her career dead. Her high-concept, haute-pretentious album, ARTPOP, was a commercial and critical disaster. (Albeit one I predict will be deemed “underrated” in the years to come—“Gypsy” is a legitimately excellent song.) Pop music’s most reliable hitmaker had fallen prey to her own artistic ambition and exhausting pop art persona. Consumers had rendered their verdict: over it.

But from the ashes of ARTPOP, Gaga is rising amid a string of shrewd, unexpected career decisions. The result? Culture’s craziest kook has reinvented herself as a bit of a classic entertainer. First was a Grammy-winning album of standards with Tony Bennett. Then a ferociously delivered tribute to The Sound of Music at the Oscars. And now, the news that she’s been cast as the lead in the next season of American Horror Story.

If you’ve seen any of Lady Gaga’s epic music videos—especially the monologue opener to “Marry the Night”—you already know that Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, the NYU-trained theater nerd who would become Lady Gaga, is a seriously talented actress.

From revelatory turns by Jessica Lange, Sarah Paulson, and Kathy Bates to theater of the absurd moments that have become the series’ calling card, American Horror Story is a home for go-for-broke performances, fearless characterization, and deranged storytelling that makes the casting of Lady Gaga on its next season both obvious and inspired. She is going to be so freaking good on this show.

More, the exuberant reaction the casting has already sparked reveals just how slick and successful Lady Gaga’s transformation over this past year has been. In many ways, between her embracing of Hollywood glamour and almost schmaltzy promotion of old Hollywood standards, Lady Gaga has become the modern-day Bette Midler.

Smartly, after being bruised by the ARTPOP failure, Gaga is focusing the conversation on one essential thing: her irrefutable talent. 

Hers is an excellent voice on Cheek to Cheek, her album with Tony Bennett. Crooning classics like “The Lady Is a Tramp” and “Anything Goes” showcase that voice in ways that her heavily—and often brilliantly—produced pop songs often mask. They illuminate something that the effortlessness of Gaga’s talents often make you forget: that in order to make the perfect pop song—and “Bad Romance,” “Poker Face,” and a handful of others are perfect pop songs—you need to have crazy-impressive vocal chops. Gaga is an incredible singer.

And should you have doubted that latter point at all, her performance at the Oscars was more than enough to change your mind. In just 10 minutes, Gaga changed the way the world saw her, all while staying true to the singular directive that has driven all of her career success: take goddamned risks. 

She absolutely nailed it. Immediately, and continuing on in the days since, her performance was ruled as the highlight of the Oscars. People couldn’t stop talking about her voice, and how unbelievably talented she was. Gaga was back, but she was different. She wasn’t just a pop star. She was a talent.

I for one wish Gaga the best of luck and hope she continues to confound her past critics.  I also hope she continues her dedication to LGBT equality.

Who Really Loves America?

With Teabagistan erupting in outrage over the "snub" of America Sniper at last night's Academy Awards - my personal view is, thank God the revisionist history/war porn won no major awards - and Rudy Giuliani attacking Barack Obama's loyalty to America in a sad effort to remain in the political spotlight, it is a good time to ask what it means to "love America."   For the "love it or leave it crowd," it means to blindly cheerleader for whatever America does no matter how wrong and heinous and to cling to the myth of "American exceptionalism" no matter what facts might suggest a conclusion to the contrary.  To me, loving America means first and foremost being honest about America's strengths and its failings.  A column in the New York Times looks at this latter type of analysis which is increasingly an unknown concept to those in the GOP base.  Here are excerpts:

We have arrived at the point where the utter tedium and desperation of personal attacks against the president about his life story and his loyalty are no longer news. The histrionics have shed their ability to shock. Most right-minded Americans — ethically speaking, not ideologically speaking — have moved on.  But occasionally the insults prove to be accidentally instructive.

Take for instance what Rudy Giuliani (“America’s mayor”) said about the president last week at a dinner for Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin (a contender for America’s president). At the dinner — attended, according to Politico, by “about 60 right-leaning business executives and conservative media types” — Giuliani said, “I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America.”  He continued, “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.” . . . and questioning the president’s faith in American exceptionalism.

As the Pew Research Center pointed out in July, “the view that the U.S. is exceptional — standing above all other countries in the world — has declined 10 points since 2011.” At that time last year, 58 percent of Americans believed America is “one of the greatest countries in the world, along with others,” while only 28 percent believed America “stands above all other countries in the world.”

And what does it mean to love the country? We’re not talking about touristic love of the place — not the mountains and the valleys, the cities and the suburbs, the mighty rivers and the shores that kiss the oceans — but a love of the idea of America.

In a way, this is an ideological battle. Conservatism is rooted in preservation; progressivism advances alteration.

Our allegiance needn’t — mustn’t — be blind to be true. We must acknowledge our warts if we are to proclaim our beauty. Our aggrandizement must be grounded. We must be willing to laud America where it has soared and rebuke it where it has faltered.  America is a great country in many ways. But it is far from perfect.

Seeking to preserve and enshrine one vision of this country from one period of its past robs it of what makes it magical: its infinite possibility for adjustment.

There is room for betterment. America is not static. America is striving.  And sometimes, America requires critique. Jingoism is an avoidance of realism.

You can simultaneously love and be disappointed in the object of your love, wanting it to be better than it is. In fact, that is a measure of love. Honest critique is a pillar of patriotism.  As James Baldwin put it, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

Of course, if you want a good take down of Giuliani, here are some highlights from a New York Post op-ed:

Rudy may have forgotten the half-dozen deferments he won ducking the Vietnam War, even getting the federal judge he was clerking for to write a letter creating a special exemption for him. And remember Bernie Kerik? He's the Giulaini police commissioner, business partner and sidekick whose nomination as homeland security secretary narrowly preceded indictments. He then did his national service in prison.

Giuliani went so far as to rebuke the President for not being "brought up the way you were and the way I was brought up through love of this country," a bow no doubt to the parenting prowess of Harold Giuliani, who did time in Sing Sing for holding up a Harlem milkman and was the bat-wielding enforcer for the loan-sharking operation run out of a Brooklyn bar owned by Rudy's uncle.

Harold, whose robbery conviction was in the name of an alias, made sure the draft board knew he was a felon. On the other hand, Obama's grandfather and uncle served. His uncle helped liberate Buchenwald, which apparently affected him so deeply he stayed in the family attic for six months when he returned home.

 There's more, but you get the drift.

Jared Leto Wins Oscar - Some Trans Activist Prove They Are Their Own Worse Enemy

I suspect that I will receive some personal attacks for this post, but I believe that its contents need to be said.  The boyfriend and I went and saw the Dallas Buyers Club several weeks ago and thought it very well done, particularly the acting by Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey in a story line that covers a very ugly period of time and lives in extreme stress and facing death.   I thought Leto did a very good job personalizing the character of Rayon and making her human in a way that many viewers could connect with, especially those who may never have met someone transgender and/or have only been exposed to Christofascist depictions of transgender individuals.  The boyfriend and I were thrilled that Leto won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar and found his comments moving:

Said Leto:

“To all the dreamers out there all around the world watching this tonight, in places like the Ukraine and Venezuela, I want to say, we are here, and as you struggle to make your dreams happen, to live the impossible, we’re thinking of you tonight.”

He added:

"And this is for the 36 million people who have lost the battle to AIDS and to those of you out there who have ever felt injustice because of who you are or who you love. I stand here in front of the world with you and for you."

Sadly, some of the usual suspects in the transgender community have trashed Leto and, in my view, demonstrated once again that some in that community are their own worse enemies.  Being angry and always negative is NOT the way to win friends and allies or to change hearts and minds.   Fortunately,  Mara Keisling, executive director at the National Center for Transgender Equality, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting, took the high road.  Here are excerpts from Huffington Post on Keisling's reaction:

“Leto’s portrayal was of a particular fictional transgender person at a particular time," Mara Keisling, executive director at the National Center for Transgender Equality, told The Huffington Post in an emailed statement Monday. "But we can’t forget that transgender people like Rayon did exist and do exist. To the film's credit, I think it accurately showed what the life of this brave person must have been and how she was treated. Our job is to make life better for transgender people like Rayon in the real world, and it really helps to have these lives told by Hollywood.”
However, Keisling did give Leto credit for at least alluding to the trans community.  “My interpretation of his acceptance speech is that he was talking about trans people when he called out to people who are disrespected for who they are.”

Mara Keisling is as always a class act.  As noted, however, others are not.   Here is a sampling of the negativity that in my mind drive would be allies away from the transgender community:

Jos Truitt of the blog Feministing wrote: "I have no interest in watching a cis man in drag play a trans woman ever again. No matter what Dallas Buyers Club does as a film, the narrative around this movie, the fact that a man in drag is playing a trans woman, perpetuates the stereotype that we are men in drag."

Putting such stereotypes in context, Time's Steve Friess compared Leto's portrayal of a transgender woman to the offensive "mammy" role popular in early 20th century cinema.

See the full HuffPo article for more of the negativity.   To these critics, I would again remind them of how the Christofascists depict the transgender community.  Perhaps Leto's portrayal wasn't perfect, but he made Rayon someone real, someone strong and brave, and someone that the average viewer could relate to and just perhaps cause them to find themselves rethinking past prejudices. 

 

More Spittle Fleck Craziness from The Christianists

It seems no one goes out of their way looking for insults and a reason to spew batshitery that the Christofascists.  Especially when the source of outrage can be directed at the Obama White House and/or Hollywood.  Michelle Obama's surprise appearance at last night's Academy Awards is one source of flying spittle - especially given her apparent reference to gay rights.  The other source of outrage among the hate group crowd is a storyline on CBS's Criminal Minds, which featured an "ex-gay" serial killer who'd undergone abusive "sexual conversion therapy."Linda Harvey and ex-gay for pay Greg Quilan are simply beside themselves and vented profusely on World Net Daily, a/k/a Wing Nut Daily.  Here's a sampling of the spittle flecked hysteria:

Sparking the comments was a recent episode of “Criminal Minds” that featured a team of FBI profilers that investigates serial killers. In the Feb. 20 episode, titled “Broken,” a serial killer is murdering women and homosexual men in what appears to be a series of sex crimes.

The episode makes a startling claim as the killer is a person who received conversion therapy as a young man to overcome homosexual attractions. According to the characters in the show, the therapy caused him to believe that acting on his same-sex attraction is wrong. This belief causes him to violently attack people, because he is conflicted about his sexual orientation.

“This man can’t accept his same-sex desires, but he can’t fight them either,” one of the profilers explains. “He’s most likely been repressing all sexual urges for some time.   “He is trapped in a scenario with an impossible outcome. He can’t force himself to like women, so when he is unable to get aroused he becomes depressed again and lashes out in anger to the people he blames for his impotence.”

The show portrays members of the ex-”gay” community as ticking time bombs who are potential serial killers. In one scene, a computer screen shot features a report portraying “The Ex-Gay Movement.” The description states that cautioning children to not have homosexual thoughts was harmful and that individuals merely claimed they had changed their same-sex attraction.

Linda Harvey, founder of Mission America, says the episode is plain and simple discrimination.
“There is absolutely no evidence behind the premise of the show. It is total and complete propaganda,” Harvey said. “Not only is it discriminating against these individuals, they slam everyone who is attempting to overcome these feelings even though there is no evidence that these feelings are inborn and say your opinions on the issue don’t matter.”


Harvey said the episode is part of a larger movement to portray conversion therapy as hateful while portraying ex-”gays” as unstable people who are a threat to everyone around them.  “The homosexual lobby and its supporters are now deciding there is a desperate need to discredit people who want to partake in conversion therapy,” Harvey said.

The people who are desperate are, in my opinion, the mentally ill individuals like Quinlan and Harvey who make a living attacking gays and homosexuality.  They see the larger public realizing that they and their "ministries" are quacks - Harvey has ZERO credentials to qualify heras credible on issues of sexual orientation - and snake oil.  But for being "ex-gay," Qunilan has no marketable skills or talents. 

As for Michelle Obama, her cardinal sin last night - other than, of course being black - is that she made a positive reference to the gay community.  Joe Jervis summarizes as follows:

 

The First Lady was the surprise final presenter at the Oscars, announcing the Best Picture winner via live video from the White House. In her presentation, Obama gave a nod to the gay community.

"These nine movies took us back in time and all around the world they made us laugh, they made us weep and they made us grip our armrests just a little tighter. They taught us that love can endure against all odds and transform our lives in the most surprising ways, and they reminded us that we can overcome any obstacle if we dig deep enough and fight hard enough and find the courage to believe in ourselves. These lessons apply to all of us no matter who we are or what we look like or where we come from or who we love."

 Needless to say, the wing nuts have gone berserk.
 

Dustin Lance Black - An LGBT Call to Activism in Virginia

As I noted in a brief post last night, the boyfriend and I attended Dustin Lance Black's speech for the Old Dominion University Presidential Lecture Series and then a VIP reception following the speech.  To say that Black's speech was moving would be a huge understatement.  In many ways he sought to call on Virginia's LGBT community to mobilize and demand nothing less than full equality and non-discrimination protects.  Do not settle for crumbs he said.  What made the speech even more powerful was his tie to Virginia: his family continues to live in Manassas, Virginia.  Moreover, he had a late brother who was gay and never found peace and self-acceptance/happiness because of Virginia's exceedingly anti-gay legal climate.  As I've noted many times before, currently in Virginia, same sex relationships receive zero recognition (even if couples have legally married in LGBT friendly states), LGBT employees can be fired at will even by state agencies and departments, and we lack other basic non-discrimination protections in housing, adoption rights and other matters.  

The other message that Black was the need to come out and live their lives openly.  Nothing dispels the lies and stereotypes disseminated by our enemies more thoroughly than having family, friends and neighbors see that LGBT individuals and come to the realization that we are just like everyone else.

I've often noted that as other nations advance in granting same sex marriage rights and protections to LGBT citizens, the promise of freedom of religion and equal protection under the law - the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, if you will - supposedly afforded to all Americans becomes more and more of a farce.  Black zeroed in on this reality and challenged all in the audience demand that the the promises and grand words of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights be brought to fulfillment.   While he did not urge a war against religion, he clearly made the case that it is time to end the GOP and Christianist view of America which I often summarize with an image that reads "This is America . . .  founded by white Christians seeking religious liberty . . . where people know their place. Keep it white and Christian."  

I hope to get a transcript or recording of Black's wonderful speech and will share more with readers once I do so.

Wings - The Original Broke Back Mountain?

Among the nominees for the Best Picture Oscar this year is the silent movie, The Artist. A film critic at Towleroad has described this year's Academy Award nominees overall as a Hollywood nostalgia fest. Which ultimately leads him to brings up the subject of the winner of the first best picture Academy Award, the 1927 movie Wings that involves two World War I fliers. I remember seeing the movie a number of years ago and it definitely has its homoerotic moments such as in the clip below which captures what was most likely the first same sex movie kiss:

Pretty passionate if you ask me and filled with angst and a feeling of lost love. The reviewer had this to say:

If you've never seen it, it's totally worth a look and not just for the gorgeous flyboys. Charles "Buddy" Rogers and Richard Arlen play Jack and David, two fighter pilots who are initially at odds. In one early military training scene they're constantly giving each other the eye. Their drill master calls them "powder puff guys" -- I'm not making this up -- and then they proceed to beat the shit out of each other. Jack regularly has David flat on his back but David won't give up. Finally Jack stops and smiles.

"Boy you're game!" he says in a title card and just like that they're besties, tenderly wiping blood from mouths (with boxing gloves still on). It's all macho ridiculous and incredibly hot if you ask me. Their super tight friendship, threatened by sharing the same love ("It" girl Clara Bow), finally leads to one of the most famous embraces in early cinema:

Elizabeth Taylor - Death of a Legend

There have been countless tributes and columns written about the death of Elizabeth Taylor yesterday. I will not try to out do them, but felt it appropriate to post a few thoughts and reflections. Taylor was a legendary actress and won two best actress Oscars in the course of making over 50 films. Yes, she had an often turbulent love life and multiple marriages. On one issue, however, she stood out even more: her willingness to use her fame and star power for a cause she truly believed in even when it was not popular in the 1980's. The cause, was HIV/AIDS research and treatment and one news clipped noted that she had helped raise over $120 million. Not only did she help found amfAR, but she also had her own foundation as well.

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As for her film's, it is hard to pick a favorite. As a history major, I always liked her in Cleopatra which wasn't a box office success, yet was pretty accurate to history, especially for Hollywood in that era. I also remember A Place in the Sun in which she stared with Montgomery Cliff because the movie was based on a real incident that happened on Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack Mountains not too far from our summer home.
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And politically, for a while she was a definite presence in Virginia as former U.S. Senator John Warner's wife. While I was no longer in Virginia Beach at the time, she even attended a Warner fundraiser at a home down the street from my parent's long time home.
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She will be missed and it's outrageous that the Westboro Baptist Church says that it will demonstrate at her funeral because she was "queen of the fag hags." One can hope the funeral will be on private property so that the false Christians and bigots from Westboro can be arrested for trespass charges. Then again, Westboro deserves credit for demonstrating time and time again the ugly face of Christianity as practiced by gay hating denominations of which it is one of many.

Fundie Obsession With Men Kissing

In the wake of the Academy Awards last week, it has been interesting to watch/listen to the fundamentalists have the vapors and convulsions over Dustin Lance Black's and Sean Penn's acceptance remarks and - oh, the horrors - scenes of men kissing at the awards ceremony. Personally, I think part of the phenomenon is that the fundies believe (or want to believe) that if gays are eliminated from public view, somehow we will just go away and that despite scientific and medical knowledge to the contrary, we will stop being born every day of the week - even into fundamentalist families. One of the high profile unhinged is Sean Hannity at Faux News who seems way too fixated to me on the issue. As GLAAD has reported, Hannity recently lamented:

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They keep showing the scenes of men kissing. And I'm thinking do we have to expose our children to more and more sex, more and more violence, you know, more and more controversy?...Listen, I'm just more sensitive. If it's going to be a family event, you know, and you want to -- you can't watch a lot of programs now because of the adult content. We're robbing these kids...of their childhood. We're over-sexualizing them at younger and younger ages.

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All kinds of straight sex is apparently fine, but the second two guys lock lips, the world order is somehow threatened. Just to set the record straight, GLAAD looked at the number of kisses shown during the Awards program and found that only 3 scenes of male to male kissing were televised out of a total of 17 kissing scenes. Thus, I'm not sure how 3 kisses amounts to "they keep showing" scenes of men kissing. Here's a video clip that GLAAD put together - you decide whether the scenes are "adult content" - my advice to Hannity is to get over it. We are here, we are citizens, and we're not going back in the closet no matter how much some would prefer that we do so.

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Human Compassion and Decency Versus the Christianists

Towleroad has what purports to be the first online publication of the introduction to MILK: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF HARVEY MILK by Milk screenwriter and Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black. I found the introduction to be moving. In addition, it also exhibits a sense of compassion and decency towards others. It is the antithesis of the intolerance, cruelty and callousness exhibited everyday in anti-gay attacks launched by self-styled "pro-family" organizations and Christianist "news" sites. I thought the polar opposites in how the "pro-gay" side and and the anti-gay "Christians" look at humanity and the lives of others says a great deal about which is the more morally upright cause. First some highlights from Dustin's introduction:

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I grew up in a very conservative Mormon military household in San Antonio, Texas. I knew from the age of six what people would call me if they ever discovered my “secret.” Faggot. Deviant. Sinner. I’d heard those words ever since I can remember. I knew that I was going to Hell. I was sure God did not love me. It was clear as day that I was “less than” the other kids, and that if anyone ever found out about my little secret, beyond suffering physical harm, I would surely bring great shame to my family.

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So I had two choices: to hide—to go on a Mormon mission, to get married and have a small Mormon family (eight to twelve kids)—or to do what I’d thought about many a time while daydreaming in Texas history class: take my own life.

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[The] moment when I heard Harvey for the first time . . . that was the first time I really knew someone loved me for me. From the grave, over a decade after his assassination, Harvey gave me life. . . he gave me hope. At that very same moment, without knowing it, I became a pawn in a game of political power wrangling that is still shedding blood from DC to Sacramento, El Paso to Altoona.

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Thirty years after Harvey began his fight for GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender) equality, I am still “less than” a heterosexual when it comes to my civil rights in America. If I fall in love with someone in a foreign country, I can’t marry him and bring him home. I can’t be out in the military, there are inheritance rights issues, adoption rights, social security, taxation, immigration, employment, housing, and access to health care rights, social services, and education rights, and on and on. The message to gay and lesbian youth today is that they are still inferior. Today, in 2008, The Gay and Lesbian Task Force reports that a third of all gay youth attempt suicide, that gay youth are four times more likely than straights to try to take their own lives, . . .

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The night after this year’s election, I attended a rally against the passage of Proposition 8, and the speakers onstage were mostly the folks who had waged the failed, closeted “No on 8” campaign. . . . . And yes, those demonstrators on television, and Harvey’s message in theaters, are exceedingly important in the continued fight over Proposition 8, but they are important to me for another, more personal reason. . . because I feel certain there is another kid out there in San Antonio tonight who woke up on November 5, 2008, and heard that gay people had lost their rights in California, that they were still “less than,” and I know all too well the dire solutions that may have flashed through his or her head.

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These photos and the accompanying quotes from my research interviews in this book don’t tell the story of a man born to lead, but of a regular man with many flaws who did what many others wouldn’t . . . he did what his people need to do again today, thirty years later . . . Harvey Milk stood up and fought back.

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And our adversaries? What do they have to say? Nothing kind or caring, that is for certain. An utter disregard for other humans who are different from themselves is instead their hallmark. They care nothing for the pain and suffering of others or the lives they ruin. First an example from Movieguide, a self-proclaimed "family guide to entertainment" in a piece entitled "Hollywood Denounces God and Applauds Pedophilia at the Oscars." Here are a few highlights (be the judge of who displays bigotry):

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The Academy Awards showed its support for sexual perversions last night at its annual Oscar ceremony. . . . The Oscar audience applauded madly when Penn, who won Best Actor for his portrayal of murdered homosexual activist Harvey Milk in the movie MILK, angrily chastised voters in California, including 70% of black voters, for having the gall in last November's elections to support the real definition of marriage.

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The audience also clapped when the winning screenwriter for MILK, Dustin Lance Black, proclaimed his bigotry when he commented, "If Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he would want me to say to all the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told they are less than by the churches, by the government, by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours. Thank you, God, for Harvey Milk!"

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At the beginning of the show, host Hugh Jackman described the message of MILK as, "It's okay to be gay." Of course, Jesus Christ believes otherwise.

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And then there is commentary entitled "Gay Rights Suffers Well-Deserved Defeat in Idaho," from Renew America concerning the defeat of a bill that would have furnished employment non-discrimination protections to employees in Idaho. Note the standard false recounting of alleged anti-Christian events and the use of the transgender boogie man; Here are highlights:

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This bill — as the following segment will illustrate in full — would have represented a grave threat to constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of association, conscience, speech and religion. . . . It would have spawned a host of lawsuits, including potential lawsuits against any municipality, public concern or private business that would not allow a transgendered individual to use the bathroom or locker room of his choice.

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Sen. LeFavour's attempt to foster religious discrimination under cover of the homosexual rights agenda is losing steam. Last year, she had the official support of the Idaho Human Rights Commission; this year, she did not. Last year, she at least was able to get her bill printed; this year she did not. Let's hope, for the sake of Idaho, that her efforts continue to lose momentum.

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I never cease to be amazed at how those who purport to be the followers of a religious tradition based on a man who described the second great Commandment after love of God to be love of neighbor as yourself are so consumed by hatred and intolerance of others. These folks are not Christians and they are a threat to the civil rights of other citizens.

Dustin Lance Black Wins Oscar

I was extremely happy to see Dustin Lance Black, a young gay Mormon, win the Oscar for best original screenplay. His acceptance speech was very moving as well. While some have criticized the movie Milk, regardless of how it might have been done differently, I believe that the movie carried a much needed message to a younger generation that is often oblivious to events of the past. It is also a reminder to the rest of us of the efforts of others in the struggle for gay rights. Obviously, the movie would not have been possible but for the screen play written by Dustin Lance Black, and I believe he did a masterful job. Having seen Milk at a private screening in Washington, D.C., last December and had the opportunity to hear Dustin, Cleve Jones and Bruce Cohen speak about the film, his win was even more poignant. Here are the notes from his speech:

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"Oh my God, this was not an easy film to make. I have to thank all the real life people who shared their stories with me... When I was 13 years old my beautiful mother and father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California and I heard the story of Harvey Miller. And it gave me hope, hope to live my life, gave me the hope to live my life openly as who I am. And maybe even I can fall in love and get married. I want to thank my Mom who always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to. If Harvey had been alive today, I think he'd want me to say to all the gay and lesbian kids out there that have been told that they are less than by their churches, their government or their families that they are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon I promise you, you will have equal rights, federally, across this great nation of ours."

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Congratulations Dustin!!