Ellen DeGeneres Doesn't Speak for the LGBT Community

Perhaps I am more sensitive because I have had anti-gay expletives directed at me and been fired for being gay.  Or perhaps I reject absolution for insincere apologies/contrition - something the Catholic Church granted to countless predator priests.  The bottom line is, I do not believe Kevin Hart should be forgiven for his past anti-gay statements and I believe the only thing he is sorry about is that he lost the gig hosting the Oscars in February.  Thus, Ellen DeGeneres doesn't speak for me or, I suspect many others in the LGBT community when she granted Hart absolution.  Indeed, the blow back DeGeneres is receiving is well deserved.  No one anointed her to speak for the rest of us and, if Hart is invited back to host the Oscars, I may well choose to NOT watch the show. A piece in the Washington Post properly takes DeGeneres to task.  Here are excerpts:

Who died and made Ellen DeGeneres the gay pope?

In December, comedian Kevin Hart’s appointment to host the 2019 Academy Awards drew renewed attention to his hateful and damaging comments about gay people. The academy asked Hart to apologize: he refused and bowed out just days after the initial announcement. Many LGBTQ people cheered the withdrawal as the right move.

But now, in an interview that aired Friday on her daytime talk show, DeGeneres has absolved Hart of his ugly history. DeGeneres, who is gay, shared during the interview that she’d even interceded to ask the Oscars organizers to reconsider Hart as host.

Et tu, Ellen? As strange as this spectacle may seem, it’s actually in keeping with DeGeneres’s brand of nice. It’s a value she has sought to spread through the world, long signing off her show by telling her audience, “Be kind to one another.” Kindness means giving second chances, and giving second chances apparently means allowing Hart, who in 2011 tweeted that if his son played with a dollhouse he would “break it over his head & say n my voice ‘stop that’s gay,’ ” to host the most prestigious event in American cinema — one that’s also known as the Gay Super Bowl for its celebration of fashion and drama. On the set of DeGeneres’s show, anyone who thinks otherwise is simply a hater.

But that loud Internet crowd, which appears much larger than DeGeneres has allowed for, has it right. Niceness doesn’t require people to be pushovers. And kindness doesn’t mean forgiving people who’ve done bad things without being sure they understand what happened and are committed to making things right. DeGeneres’s unilateral dispensation to Hart on behalf of the LGBTQ community (and her kneecapping of Hart’s critics) truncates that process. That’s bad for all the LGBT people she claims to represent. And it’s bad for Hart, who gets to skip over the part of the process where he becomes a better, more empathetic person.

Hart made a halfhearted apology when he announced he was stepping down as host. But he hasn’t made any clear amends to LGBTQ people, and he certainly doesn’t seem to have atoned for his words. How can he, so long as he views the criticism of his past words as “slander on my name”?

More important, even if Hart had more fully repented, his sins are not DeGeneres’s to forgive.

Hart’s remarks were directed to queer people of color, who are generally much more vulnerable than their white counterparts. A 2017 poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard showed that LGBTQ people of color are twice as likely to have experienced discrimination in hiring and police interactions as white LGBTQ people, and that they are six times as likely to not call the police in a threatening situation so as to avoid reprisal.

Really, no single person is qualified to offer the forgiveness of all of queer America. But a white cisgender woman who is widely beloved and obscenely wealthy to boot is particularly ill-suited to try to muster such papal authority. For DeGeneres to think herself licensed to dispense this pass to Hart suggests that the only real indulgence here is her own.

Support JC Penney - Go Shopping!

I've posted a couple of times about the Christiannist onslaught and boycott effort against retailer JC Penney because (1) the company hired Ellen Degeneres as a spokeswoman and (2) because the company included a photo of two gay dads in the Father's Day catalog (see the image above).  The haters are apoplectic because JC Penney acknowledges that gays exist and that we have family values too.  Our family values, however, are not based on fear, self-inflicted ignorance and hatred of others who are different from ourselves.  I have also encouraged LGBT consumers to spend their money at JC Penney  as a way of saying "thank you" to the company for not knuckling under to the hate merchants and Christofascists.

Today I took my own advice and ran by the local JC Penney store before heading down the street to a 4th of July party at a neighbor's home that looks out across Hampton Roads harbor with a panoramic view of the harbor and the U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet at the Norfolk Naval Base.   JC Penney is not a high end designer stre, but I was able to find some nice things and left the store with five items that included some designer names at a great price.  In fact,  wore the Joseph Abboud shorts I bought to today's party.

We as a community need to support those who don't surrender to the demands of our enemies.  I for one will continue to target my spending toward gay friendly companies and businesses.

JCPenney Features Real Gay Couple In Fathers’ Day Ad - Christianist Heads Will Explode

While the ex-gay ministries have taken a body blow in the form of the updated Sptizer recantation and the move in California to outlaw reparative therapy, things aren't exactly sweetness and light for the Christofascists who want gays to return to an invisible status.  After already riling the "One Million Bitchs" with its ads featuring Ellen Degeneres, JC Penny has now launched a fathers' day ad that features a real life gay couple and their two children (see image above).  The Christianist heads will be definitely exploding even as the One Million Bitches have their panties in an unbelievable wad.  Personally, I love it and may need to see if there's anything at JC Penney I might want to purchase.  And if it drives the hate merchants crazy, so much the better.  Here are excerpts from Think Progress:

JCPenney has just launched a Fathers’ Day advertisement featuring a gay couple with their children, noting that the ad portrays “real-life dads Todd Koch and Cooper Smith with their children, Claire and Mason.”
The copy reads:

First Pals: What makes Dad so cool? He’s the swim coach, tent maker, best friend, bike fixer and hug giver — all rolled into one. Or two.

The ad builds on the department store’s recent decisions to stand with the LGBT community. In February, when JCPenney came under fire from the anti-gay group One Million Moms for bringing on the openly-gay comedian Ellen DeGeneres as a spokesperson, the store stood behind its partnership with Ellen. JCPenney’s CEO said that “Ellen represents the values of our company” — and with this kind of pro-equality advertising, JCPenney is continuing to reinforce its progressive values.

In response to the earlier Christianist outrage, Ellen laid out her values which are the polar opposite of the values demonstrated by the behavior of the "godly Christian" set even though they are wholly consistent with the true Gospel message:

Ellen DeGeneres Spends $100,000 to Broadcast 'No on Prop 8' PSA

The Bay Area Reporter has a story that Ellen DeGeneres has purchased $100,000 of television air time for the No on 8 campaign to run a message she taped urging California voters to defeat Proposition 8. Given Ellen's wide popularity and the fact that putting an actual face on victims of one's bigotry can have a effect in changing minds, I applaud Ellen's actions and hope that many California voters will think be fore they fall for the fear and hate-based bigotry being disseminated by proponents of Proposition 8. Here are some highlight highlights:

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Out television talk show host Ellen DeGeneres finally put her money where her mouth is. After weeks of criticism from the gay press and bloggers, DeGeneres has purchased $100,000 of television air time for the No on 8 campaign to run a message she taped urging California voters to defeat Proposition 8, which would eliminate same-sex marriage in California. The announcement was made Friday morning by the No on 8 campaign.

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In the video message, DeGeneres says that she believes "in equality for all people. Proposition 8 does not. Please, please, vote no on Prop 8." She also mentions her own wedding; in August she married longtime partner Portia de Rossi.

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Here's what the PSA says:

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"Hi, I’m Ellen DeGeneres. I got to do something this year I never thought I’d ever be able to do: I got married. It was the happiest day of my life. There are people out there raising millions of dollars to try and take that right away from me. You’ve seen their ads on TV. They’re twisting the truth, and they’re trying to scare you. I believe in fairness. I believe in compassion. I believe in equality for all people. Proposition 8 does not. Please, please, vote no on Prop. 8."

SNL Shows Poor Judgment with Gay Sketch

With the recent murder of two gay teenagers and the brutal attack on another, one would think that Saturday Night Live might have thought twice before airing a sketch basically making fun of lesbians. With all the hate filled messages being continually disseminated by the Christianists and members of the GOP across the country, a supposed comedy show should not be adding to a mentality where gays are open game for ridicule and off screen much worse. When I first bought my house in a neighborhood of 80 to 100 year old homes that had seen better days but which had started to transition back for the better, I can assure you that hearing punks yell "get out of here faggot or we'll kill you" was not exactly heart warming. This type of crap on SNL does NOT help end that mentality. Here is what QueerTwoCents very correctly had to say on the topic (http://queertwocents.blogspot.com/2008/03/ellen-page-is-lesbian-sketch-snl.html):

Is the Oscar-nominated star of the hit film Juno, Canadian actress Ellen Page (pictured at left), a lesbian? Just the rumour that the 21-year-old Page might be gay provoked Saturday Night Live into action this past weekend. They built an entire sketch around Page's goin'-gay (or not, wink, wink). Her sketch character pokes fun at the pesky lesbian notion when she returns home to her boyfriend after attending a Melissa Etheridge concert. She declares to him (SNL regular, Andy Samberg) that she felt like "...an oil lamp that had never been lit... now I'm finally burning bright with sister fire." She added, "There were so many cute short hair cuts and I didn't care that I didn't have any makeup on..." The boyfriend declares she's "so gone gay", to which she replies, "Why can't I just hug a woman with my legs in friendship?"

Wasn't it only the morning before that the other Ellen, the openly gay one, Ms. DeGeneres, told her vast TV audience that it's "okay to be gay" and that we should "... start paying attention to how often being gay is a punchline . . . Ellen DeGeneres' words were not prophetic, just accurate. Choosing to make fun of someone or maliciously speculate about their 'chosen lifestyle' because of a haircut or "tomboy movie roles", is still a national sport and we are still the targets. Whether Ms. Page is lesbian - or not - it's too bad she felt the need to participate in the hunt.

Ellen DeGeneras : ‘We Must Change’ Our Country’s Attitudes Towards Gays.

I am glad to see that Ellen DeGeneras who has a huge number of viewers is speaking out about the murder of 15-year-old Lawrence King, which I have posted about previously. For new readers, Larry was killed by a classmate for being gay. Saying that “we must change our country,” Ellen urged her audience to “check on who you’re voting for” to see if they stand for gay rights. As I have said before, the constant venom spewed by the Christian Right slowly buy surely creates an atmosphere where Christianist bigots and others come to have a mindset where it is acceptable to kill and use other forms of violence against gays. It's horrible and it's sick, yet the main street media lacks the balls to lay responsibility at the feet of people like Mike Huckabee and other self-righteous false Christians. The law prevents one from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, but no one stops the haters from doing the equivalent thing when it comes to engendering hatred towards LGBT citizens. I salute Ellen for saying what she did. here are highlights from Think Progress (http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/29/ellen-we-must-change-our-countrys-attitudes-towards-gays/):

I need to talk to you about something that’s really serious and really sad. And, if you know me it’s hard to talk about sad stuff without getting emotional but this is really important to talk about. On February 12th an openly gay 15 year-old boy named Larry, (King) who was an 8th grader in Oxnard, California was murdered by a fellow 8th grader, named Brandon. Larry was killed because he was gay. Days before he was murdered, Larry had asked his killer to be his Valentine.

I don’t want to be political. This is not political. I’m not a political person, but this is personal to me. A boy has been killed and a number of lives have been ruined. And, somewhere along the line the killer, Brandon got the message that it’s so threatening so awful and so horrific that Larry would want to be his Valentine, that killing Larry seemed to be the right thing to do. And when the message out there is so horrible that to be gay, you can get killed for it, we need to change the message.

Larry was not a second-class citizen. I am not a second-class citizen. It’s ok if you’re gay. I don’t care what people say; I don’t care what people think. I know there are entire groups of people who face discrimination every single day and I know we are a long way from treating each other equally.

All of it is unacceptable. All of it. But I would like you to start paying attention to how often being gay is the punch line of a monologue or how often gay jokes are in a movie. And that kind of message, laughing at someone because they’re gay is just the beginning. It starts with laughing at someone, and then it’s verbal abuse, then it’s physical abuse, and it’s this kid Brandon killing a kid like Larry.

We must change our country, and we can do it. We can do it with our behavior; we can do it with the messages that we send our children. We can do it with our vote. This is an election year and there’s a lot of talk about change. I think one thing we should change is hate. Check on who you’re voting for. Does that person really truly believe that we are all equal under the law? If you’re not sure, I say change your vote. We deserve better.

My heart goes out to everybody involved on this horrible, horrible incident. All the families, even Brandon’s life has changed because he did this.

NOTE: A video of Ellen's comments can be seen on Think Progress or on Ellen's web site: http://ellen.warnerbros.com/2008/02/a_tragedy_that_should_never_ha.php