Is the Closet Behind Hollywood Sex Abuse Allegations?

The Roman Catholic Church continues to be shaken by sex abuse allegations fueled, in my view, by the Church's warped 12th century dogma on human sexuality and the forced celibacy of the priesthood which together have psychologically disturbed clergy and a significant portion of the priesthood being comprised of emotionally tormented closeted gays. It was and continues to be a recipe for disastrous consequences, not that the corrupt leadership at the Vatican will ever willing admit the error of their dogma.  Travel from the Vatican to Hollywood and one sees gays still being told to stay in the closet if they hope to have successful careers.  Go back decades in the past and the situation was even worse as the studio system demanded fake marriages and contrived dating situations.  Actor Ian McKellen states that he believes the Hollywood closet has played a role in the sex abuse allegations against Kevin Spacey and Bryan Singer. If true, it certainly is no excuse, but it should focus attention on the pervasive damage done living in the closet.  Here are excerpts from Vanity Fair:

Ian McKellen has a controversial theory regarding why both Kevin Spacey and Bryan Singer allegedly sexually abused several under-aged men.  At a live recording of the podcast #QueerAF, journalist Evan Davis asked the actor what he made of allegations of sexual misconduct against performers with whom he’d collaborated in the past—including Spacey and Singer. His response?
 “[T]he couple of names you mentioned, of people I’ve worked with, most of them were in the closet—hence all their problems as people, and their relationship with other people. If they had been able to be open about themselves and their desires, they wouldn’t have started abusing people in the way they’re being accused.” McKellen has worked with Singer on several films, including the X-Men franchise—most recently, X-Men: Days of Future Past—and 1998’s Apt Pupil. The actor also worked with Spacey during Spacey’s time as the artistic director of the Old Vic theater, where 20 allegations would eventually surface from a confidential tip line to describe Spacey’s alleged inappropriate behavior. Spacey denied some of the allegations against him as they emerged before, eventually issuing an apology to Anthony Rapp, who accused Spacey in the fall of 2017 of making a sexual advance toward Rapp when Rapp was 14. When allegations of sexual abuse first emerged against Spacey in 2017, the actor initially responded by coming out publicly. “This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life,” Spacey said at the time. “I now choose to live as a gay man.” In response, GLAAD C.E.O. Sarah Kate Ellis tweeted, “Coming out stories should not be used to deflect from allegations of sexual assault. Singer, who has been accused of sexually abusing young men for years, has always vehemently denied all allegations against him; in January, when an exposé in The Atlantic detailed new allegations against him, Singer replied by calling the report a “homophobic smear piece.” In 2014, Singer was accused twice of sexual abuse; one case was dropped, and the other dismissed. In 2017, Singer was sued for allegedly raping a 17-year-old boy in 2003. The case is still pending. Despite that, he went on to executive produce the TV series Legion, and direct 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody, before he was fired for allegedly being frequently absent from set, and for clashing with star Rami Malek.

The sooner society lets go of Bronze Age myths found in the Old Testament, the better off the world will be.

From Liz Smith To Kevin Spacey: How The Hollywood Closet Endured

Gossip columnist Liz Smith died this week at the age of 94.  During her most powerful years, her gossip column could boost careers or trash them.  Ironically, through it all, Smith was a largely closeted lesbian with long term relationships with women.   The other irony is that Smith and others aided in maintaining the Hollywood closet and all of the harm that it wreaked on numerous lives.  Fellow LGBT blogger and activist Michelangelo Signorile has a piece in Huffington Post that looks at Smith and others who perhaps unwittingly aided in sexual harassment by closeted figures while maintaining the Hollywood and celebrity closet.  Here are excerpts:

This week’s death of 94-year-old Liz Smith, the queen of gossip columnists, brought some frank assessments of her complicated relationship with the closet, including in the New York Times, Vanity Fair and a detailed, personal piece by Michael Musto in the fashion bible, W magazine.

I wrote angry columns as an editor and columnist at OutWeek from 1989 through 1991, referenced in some of these current assessments, excoriating Smith for her role in helping to keep the queer closet in pop culture tightly closed at a time when visibility was literally a life or death issue.

As the AIDS plague escalated, Smith, in her New York Daily News column, syndicated to dozens of newspapers nationally in those days before the Internet, was helping to cover for people like Calvin Klein, Jodie Foster, Hollywood mogul David Geffen, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, Malcolm Forbes, photographer Annie Liebovitz and many, many more ― all of whom have since come out, no doubt due to the pressure and the exhaustion of keeping the closet door tightly closed.

Smith not only “respected” the closets of Hollywood celebrities and other public figures, but she also actively promoted lies and distortions, running items about false heterosexual affairs that their publicists fed her, though she knew the truth full well, since she traveled in these celebrities’ circles. 

That was the epitome of Fake News, way back in 1989.   When it came to heterosexual public figures and their affairs, divorces and other romantic interests, Smith and other celebrity and political chroniclers not only had to get their details correct ― per proper journalism ― but they knew the public saw this as glamorous and exciting. Homosexuality, on the other hand, was something that revolted many in that profoundly homophobic era, so these scribes hid behind the notion of protecting “privacy” as an excuse for hiding information or outright lying.

This was of course hypocritical ― not caring about the privacy of heterosexual public figures but suddenly having more ironclad ethics when it came to the privacy of homosexuals, even when reporting on their sexual orientation was relevant to a larger, important story ― as the only thing they were protecting was often the industry that they, too, built their careers within.

And worse off, many or most of the columnists ― like Liz Smith ― were closeted and queer themselves. What better system for the powers-that-be than than to have queer people who have their own vested career and financial interests in the closet guarding the secrets of other closeted prominent and powerful people? What we’ve learned is that when celebrities feel pressured by both the LGBTQ community and the media to come out ― from Melissa Etheridge and Rosie O’Donnell to Neil Patrick Harris and Demi Lovato ― rather than being hurt they actually thrive, both personally and in their careers.

We’re also able to look back now on the dangers of the closet and protecting it at all costs with zealous anti-“outing” polices with regard to public figures, and rethink just what “outing” means. As I wrote recently regarding Kevin Spacey, protecting his closet was dangerous because some, even in the gay press, who knew of his sexual harassment of an underage actor refused to report it, wrongly equating his abuse of a male minor with being gay itself and thus afraid they were going to “out” him.

So many closeted public figures have in fact engaged in same-sex harassment and assault often because they couldn’t go out in public to bars or elsewhere and knowing they could get away with it because no one in the media would ever dare report on it.

That was the case with multimillionaire Malcolm Forbes, who was sexually harassing his male employees ― and also living a secret life dating men while people like Liz Smith, who’d been flown by him to his lavish parties on yachts around the world and in places like Morocco, perpetrated the glamorous but false notion that he was romantically involved with his platonic friend Elizabeth Taylor. 

That’s not to say Smith herself didn’t do good things for charity, including in battling AIDS, raising money for the cause and promoting such events that raised funds. But the most powerful thing she could do in those times was to come out and stop closeting others, and show the visibility of queer people, and stand up to the homophobes.

Eventually she did come out as bisexual, many years later. . . . . And this year, at the age of 94, she finally admitted she should have come out sooner. 

I do not mean to be unkind to Smith and others like her.  I existed in a combination of self-loathing and terror of my secret being discovered for many years in the closet.  It is not a good place to be and often blinds you to the better course of action.  Hopefully, despite the efforts of the Trump/Pence regime to re-mainstream anti-LGBT discrimination, the era of the closet is fading and fewer and fewer people will feel the need to be untrue to themselves and less than honest with others.  No one chooses to be born LGBT just as no one gets to choose to be black or born into a Muslim family.  It is far past time that ALL of us simply accept each other as creations of the Creator/god who are equal to one another, no one better than another.

Quote of the Day: Meryl Streep on Trump (and His Deplorables)

Meryl Streep is, in my opinion, one of the most remarkable actresses of our generation.  Her skill and talent and ability to internalize and then project the feelings of other is legendary.  Last night she accepted the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes ceremony and used her speech as an opportunity to slam President-elect Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Fuhrer, and his basket full of deplorables that put him into office despite his near 3 million loss in the popular vote. What was amazing is that she slammed Der Fuhrer without ever mentioning him by name.  Her clarion call to the press will hopefully be heeded and, unlike during the 2016 presidential campaign, the press will hold both Trump and his deplorables accountable.   Here are highlights from Entertainment Weekly: 

Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press, just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said, you and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it: Hollywood, foreigners and the press. But who are we, and what is Hollywood anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places. I was born and raised and educated in the public schools in New Jersey; Viola [Davis] was born in sharecroppers cabin in South Carolina and came up in Central Falls, Rhode Island; Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn; Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio; Amy Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy; and Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in Ireland and she’s here nominated for playing a small town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, and is here playing an Indian raised in Tasmania. So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners, and if we kick them all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.

An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like, and there were many, many, many powerful performances that did exactly that — breathtaking, compassionate work. But there was one performance this year that stunned me, it sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good, there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was the moment where the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it and I still can’t get it out of head because it wasn’t in a movie, it was real life. And this instinct to humiliate when it’s modeled by someone in a public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life because it gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence, and when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

Okay this brings me to the press. We need the principal press to hold power to account, to call him them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists because we’re gonna need them going forward and they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.

Warren Beatty Is Still Seducing Hollywood

As a teen, I thought Warren Beatty was hot.  It's one of the weird aspects of being in denial about one's sexual orientation: you struggle to convince yourself that you are straight even as you have attraction to gorgeous males. The mental gymnastics are insane.  Now, Vanity Fair has a lengthy article on Richmond, Virginia born Beatty - who has a transgender son.  On a dreary Saturday morning, the article is an interesting read.  Here are brief highlights:

He is one of the most famous actors of the second half of the 20th century, was the most talked-about wooer of women in his day (his former paramours are legion, and all are beauties), and is one of Hollywood’s more successful filmmakers, known for equal amounts of shrewdness and seductive charm. He has been called “the Prince of Hollywood,” “the Pro,” and “Boss.” He was a famous movie star before any of them—before Clint, before Redford, before Dustin, before Pacino, even before his good friend Jack Nicholson. Throughout his nearly 60-year career as an actor, director, screenwriter, and producer, Warren Beatty has been nominated for 14 Academy Awards (including best actor, best picture, best director, best original screenplay, and best adapted screenplay), winning the best-director Oscar for Reds in 1981. He pops up in the diaries of Andy Warhol, the journals of J.F.K. historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a biography of James Baldwin, and countless celebrity memoirs. Although a decade can pass between the release of his movies, when they arrive on the scene they are cultural events. And he’s coming squarely back into the public gaze again this year, with Rules Don’t Apply, the rumored re-release of Bulworth, and the upcoming 50th anniversary of Bonnie and Clyde, in which he starred as Clyde Barrow.

Due to be released next month, Rules Don’t Apply has been described as a biographical film about eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, but it’s actually about two would-be lovers finding themselves in the labyrinth of Hollywood against a backdrop of 1950s sexual repression. Beatty plays Howard Hughes in a supporting role.

“There’s this misapprehension that it’s a biopic,” Beatty explains, “which it’s not, although Howard is an important character in it. I wanted to do a story about a girl who comes from being the Apple Blossom Queen of Winchester, Virginia [Marla Mabrey, played by Lily Collins], and a boy who is a Methodist from Fresno [Frank Forbes, played by Alden Ehrenreich], who is under the same religious influences that I was raised in. I wanted to do a story about that young man and that young woman that also deals with money and misogyny in late-1950s Hollywood.”

One doesn’t immediately associate Beatty with puritanical guilt and repression, but that is the world he grew up in, in conservative Virginia in the 1940s and 50s, and the one he has rebelled against his entire life. “I’m afraid it still remains a big subject in America,” he says, “which often makes us the laughingstock of France and other European countries. So I thought this would be fun to deal with—a young man and a young woman involved with an unpredictable billionaire, who had no rules he had to follow because of his inheritance and his way of life. So it’s also about the effect of Hollywood on those rules, and the effect of money.”

The story of a young man coming to Hollywood from a conservative background is one he knows all too well. He and his sister, the actress Shirley MacLaine, were raised by Southern Baptist parents. Still, the family was somewhat bohemian. Their mother was an acting teacher, their father a high-school principal who was also something of a raconteur and bon vivant. Beatty recalled the first time he came downstairs dressed in a suit for church, astonishing his parents. He also admitted being convinced that if he had sex with a girl, he would have to marry her, one of the many autobiographical touches he brings to Rules Don’t Apply. 

Just as Beatty was something of a sexual revolutionary in the years emerging from the strict mores of the 1950s, so his firstborn child is also a revolutionary. Stephen, who is challenging cultural norms of sexuality, is an activist for the transgender community. Identifying as transitioned at the age of 14, he changed his name from Kathlyn Elizabeth to Stephen Ira. A poet and writer, he posted an “Answer to Seven Questions” about his gender identity on the “WeHappyTrans” Web site. One is struck by Stephen’s insouciant intelligence—he manages to be playful, erudite, and eloquent all at once.

“He’s a revolutionary, a genius, and my hero, as are all my children,” Beatty says when asked about Stephen.
 

Beatty with sister, Shirley MacLaine

North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law Is Based on a Total Lie

North Carolina's heinous anti-LGBT Law passed by the GOP controlled legislature and signed into law by the Republican governor is prompting sharp reactions across the blogosphere and gay rights groups are gearing up to file a federal lawsuit to have the law struck down since it does exactly what the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in Romer v. Evans.  Meanwhile, in Georgia the Republican governor is under growing pressure to veto that state's foul "religious freedom" law by Hollywood and the movie industry with the clear implication being that Georgia could lose 1.7 billion dollars in movie industry revenue if the governor signs the bill into law.  The ultimate irony, however, is that both laws are based on lies - a fact that should surprise no one who follows the Christofascists who lie more often and more deliberately than just about about any segment of the populace.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the lie behind North Carolina's heinous law.  Here are highlights:

North Carolina just wrote, passed, and signed into law the most anti-LGBT measure of the past decade—and it was all based on a lie.

The state has undone not just local ordinances protecting transgender people, but all LGBT nondiscrimination provisions across the state. Literally overnight, people in Charlotte and across North Carolina can now be fired from their jobs for being gay, turned away at hotel chains for being gay, and even forced to show their genitals to a police officer if the cop thinks they might be transgender.

And unlike in Georgia, where a constellation of businesses has arrayed to oppose an anti-LGBT bill, bigots in North Carolina don’t even need religion as an excuse.

Instead, they’ve used a lie about anti-discrimation ordinances: that they will cause girls to use the boys room and vice versa. Legislators who, in an act that surely must be considered child abuse, even got a high school student to testify that “Girls like me should never be forced to undress or shower in the presence of boys.”

That is completely, 100 percent untrue. The ordinance that ignited this debate, passed by Charlotte on Feb. 22, only prevents businesses from discriminating against gay people. That does include enabling transgender people to use gender-appropriate restrooms, but only if they are really transgender. Nor would gender-appropriate restrooms lead to sexual assault: in fact there is not one case in 17 states and 225 other cities with such ordinances of rapists using their legal cover to attack women.

Yet the North Carolina legislature went far, far beyond overturning that ordinance. Part I of the law does, indeed, require all bathrooms to be restricted by “biological sex” as defined on one’s birth certificate, but Parts II and III have nothing to do with that, and instead roll back any local ordinances protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender people from discrimination in employment and public accommodations. It is sheer opportunism, piggybacking an unrelated anti-gay law atop a misinformed anti-trans one.

Now that the Big Bathroom Lie has worked twice—the first time was in Houston—the question all right-thinking people must ask themselves is: Do the people telling the lie even believe themselves?

“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” So wrote Adolf Hitler (not Goebbels, as often thought), in his chapter on “War Propaganda” in Mein Kampf.  That seems to be the case here. Some people clearly are dupes . . .

Some of the law’s supporters may also be so transphobic that they still call Caitlyn Jenner “Bruce” and think she belongs in the men’s room. These may be the worst of all, because unlike the fictive “bathroom menace,” there are very real statistics about violence suffered by transgender people, especially transgender women. Some of these women testified to the legislature, to no avail.

But mostly, the backers of this bill are liars. They are cynically creating and exploiting public fears to score points with their base, raise money, and win victories against LGBT people in areas of employment and public accommodations—victories they know they couldn’t get if they attacked the issue honestly.

Surely, by now, the national groups behind this legislation—the [hate groups] Family Research Council, Alliance Defending Freedom, American Family Association—are fully aware that they are lying. They know that there is not a single case on record of a man taking advantage of a nondiscrimination bill, dressing up as a woman, being allowed into a women’s restroom, and sexually assaulting someone. They also know that ordinances like Charlotte’s would not eliminate single-sex restrooms and locker rooms.

So, these purported men of God are liars.

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.”
 

Did Actor Colton Haynes Just Come Out As Gay?

Increasingly it has become the norm for Hollywood reporters and scandal sheets to speculate about the sexual orientation of actors.  One who has been a target of this effort is Colton Haynes who has some very gay looking photos in his past that he once sought to suppress.  Now, Eonline reports that Haynes may be coming out:

Arrow star, Teen Wolf alum and former model Colton Haynes drew much attention on social media on Saturday when he replied to a person's comment about his supposed sexuality.

On Tumblr, a user had written, "When I found out Colton Haynes had a secret gay past, I got so excited even though i know it makes absolutely no difference in my life."

"Was it a secret?" Haynes, 27, responded on his own official Tumblr blog. "Let's all just enjoy life & have no regrets :)"

Colton, who is immensely popular and very active on a number of social media platforms, has always remained private online about his sexuality and love life and has often sparked speculation about it. After his comment, Twitter exploded with more.

One blogger/activist notes:

Haynes has, however, been outspoken about his support for LGBT rights and shared pics on Instagram of his gay brother Joshua and his husband Scott.  

Kudos to Colton.  Life in the closet is destructive and, hopefully, he can help others to avoid living a closeted life. 

 

Kerry Washington Calls Out Black Homophobes - and Others

Charley Gallay/Getty Images for GLAAD

One thing that has continued to strike me since coming out is how blacks - a demographic that has faced horrific discrimination simply because of who they were - are all too likely to be homophobic.  Worse yet, at least here in Virginia, they allow them selves to be duped and used as water carriers for whites who would prefer to see a return to the Jim Crow era and the disenfranchisement of blacks.  An example?  The black pastors who continually allow themselves to be manipulated by The Family Foundation which is viciously anti-gay and which supports all the the Virginia GOP's voter ID laws and other efforts to disenfranchise blacks and whose officials are routinely caught telling racist "jokes."  Are these black pastors total cretins?  This past Saturday, as she accepted the Vangrard Award at the GLAAD Media Awards, Scandal star Kerry Washington let loose on black homophobes and others who remain anti-gay and who, in my view have a moral sickness that allows them to feel good about them selves only when denigrating and marginalizing others.  Here are highlights of Washington's remarks via The Daily Beast:

Scandal star Kerry Washington announced that she was going to use the occasion, in this case the GLAAD Media Awards and her acceptance of The Vanguard award Saturday night, to address issues that were both pertinent to the award and dear to her heart. The actress, who’s played LGBT characters in films such as She Hate Me and Life Is Hot In Cracktown, spoke about the ongoing marginalization of the LGBT community and others in Hollywood that sit outside of the standard white, straight, Christian, male narrative. “Women, poor people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants, gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, trans people, intersex people…have been pitted against each other and made to feel like there are limited seats at the table for those of us who fall into the category of other,” the Emmy-nominated star stated, to rounds of applause.

But she also spoke directly to her own community, specifically. Washington addressed the hypocrisy she sees in black people who don’t support marriage equality. “So when black people today tell me that they don't believe in gay marriage… So, the first thing that I say is, ‘Please don't let anybody try to get you to vote against your own best interest by feeding you messages of hate.’ And then I say, ‘You know people used to stay that stuff about you and your love and if we let the government start to legislate love in our lifetime, who do you think is next?’”

Washington’s words seem to echo sentiments expressed by Lee Daniels, Oscar-nominated director and creator of FOX’s hit series Empire. . . . “Homophobia is rampant in the African American community, and men are on the DL,” he said. “They don’t come out, because your priest says, your pastor says, mama says, your next-door neighbor says, your homie says, your brother says, your boss says [that homosexuality is wrong]. And they are killing African American women. They are killing our women. So I wanted to blow the lid off more on homophobia in my community.”

Black homophobia is real and has to be rooted out if we are going to move forward as a society and as a people. We can’t champion the rights of only straight black people as if they are all that matter or are the only voice that should be given a platform. Either all of us are free or none of us are free. But in addressing that homophobia, those who consider themselves opponents of homophobia and racism should be mindful of how easily one can be used to galvanize the other, and it’s not in the best interest of progress to allow a room full of entitled white liberals to believe that the only bigots are the ones who don’t look like them.  Ignorance and hate are not black-exclusive.

The LGBT Community's Fair Weather Friends in Hollywood

Cracker Barrel - which, candidly I have never liked - and now A&E have knuckled under to the rants and boycott threats of the white Christofasists who have been "outraged" by A&E's short-lived suspension of gay hater Phil Robertson and falsely claimed that their "religious liberty" and "free speech rights" were under attack.  Meanwhile, of course, it is they who are the victimizers of others.  But that doesn't stop Hollywood from cave in into these purveyors of hate and bigotry.  Not when the targets of such hate are gays or even blacks.  Can one imaging how the Hollywood crowd would have reacted if Robertson's rant had been against Jews and called them Christ killers or some other outrageous bullshit?  Michelangelo Signorile has a justified condemnation of the LGBT community's spineless fair weather friends in Hollywood.  Here are excerpts:

Too many people are dismissing the action of A&E at reinstating Phil Robertson so soon after suspending him from Duck Dynasty. It's just a TV show, they say, and we have all of these wins on marriage equality -- and look at Utah!

But this is not about, "Oh, we're 'winning,' so who cares about Duck Dynasty? As long as our so-called "friends" in Hollywood promote and tolerate this kind of hate for money, we've not won much.

Tomorrow they'll throw an AIDS benefit to assuage their guilt, or come out and say some wonderful things about LGBT people, while making millions of dollars by promoting hate against us, shrouded in religious beliefs, and raising America's kids on hate. And the racism they're promoting with Phil Robertson, who posited that blacks were happier under Jim Crow, while they claim to be so inclusive and anti-racist, is appalling, and shows the height of Hollywood hypocrisy.

Challenging homophobia and racism is not just about "rights" and "winning" in courtrooms and legislatures. It's about what culture promotes and what's acceptable to make money on -- what bigotry is clearly able to be marketed and sold to the masses who've been fed this crap for decades.

Hollywood and it's supposed pro-gay, anti-racist liberals allowed Sarah Palin and the right to give them "free speech" cover -- when we all know this has nothing to do with free speech -- to make millions of dollars off of hate. As blogger Pam Spaulding wrote, the "problem with brushing this DD flap aside as just meaningless, is the fact that corporations, with this quick slap in the face of LGBTs (and black folks) is that it's a recognition of bigots as a demographic that must be catered to. That is no small deal, people."

Search the hate group and white supremacist websites - they are all jumping for joy that they have "won" and that open bigotry is perfectly acceptable.  It's not.  At least not among decent and truly moral people.  And that rules out both the Christofascist/white supremacists and the spineless crowd in Hollywood (which is showing about as much fortitude as the "good Germans" during the 1930's).

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.
 

Actress Jodie Foster Comes Out At Golden Globes

Ending years of rumors and speculation, Oscar winning actress Jodie Foster came out at the Golden Globe Awards last night after receiving the Cecil B. Demille award.  In a moving acceptance speech Foster explained her past reticence about giving up her privacy but stated that she felt the need to clarify maters at this point in her life.  I for one wish her well and hope that she finds additional peace and self-ease with the announcement behind her.  Living a secret of sorts become so exhausting and draining.  Huffington Post has details on Foster's announcement.  Here are excerpts:

Jodie Foster ended years of rampant media speculation when she casually came out of the closet while accepting her Cecil B. Demille award at the Golden Globes Sunday night. 

After being introduced by Robert Downey Jr., Foster coyly said, "While I’m here being all confessional, I just have the sudden urge to say something I’ve never been able to air in public. A declaration that I’m a little nervous about. Not quite as nervous as my publicist, huh, Jennifer? But uh, you know, I’m just going to put it out there. Loud and proud. I’m going to need your support. I am -- single!"

She then took a more serious turn, noting, "I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age. In those very quaint days when a fragile young girl would open up to trusted friends, and family, coworkers and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her."

Throughout her occasionally long-winded yet stirring speech, Foster, 50, went on to speak about privacy and its general absence in Hollywood -- a luxury that, to her, seems like a distant past.  .  .  .  .  ."If you had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe you, too, would value privacy above all else."

Foster also thanked her ex-partner and co-parent, Cydney Bernard, and said she would only take projects that challenged her creatively -- which left a number of publications such as the Los Angeles Times to speculate whether or not the Oscar-winning actress was also announcing her retirement.

Again, I wish her well and hope she finds much happiness.  And I further hope that the gay will come when LGBT individuals will be viewed simply as people and that sick individuals like the professional Christian set who only feel self-satisfied when demonizing others will be viewed as the outcasts of society.