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.

Finding "Someone who Completely Gets Me"

I have had the pleasure of meeting Dustin Lance Black - or Lance as he calls himself - on three occasions and have found him to be a sweet, thoughtful and unassuming individual.  He is also someone who has been on a mission to bring marriage equality nationwide and was a founding member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights.  Now, Black is engaged to marry Olympian Tom Daley and he has made some touching statements.  The Christofascists seek to denigrate same sex love, but Lance's statements cut through to the beauty of loving same sex relationships.  Here are excerpts from Gay Star News: 

Newly engaged, Oscar winning screenwriter and LGBTI activist Dustin Lance Black is opening up about his feelings for fiance Tom Daley and their relationship.

‘I met someone who completely gets me,’ he tells the podcast Defining Marriage.

‘I definitely know that we’re better for having each other. We dream bigger. Things seem so much more possible together. Two and a half years in and it still feels like every day is a dream.’

The couple announced their engagement with an announcement in a British newspaper last month.

He says of getting married: ‘There’s power in the word, that the word is understood by society and it means that when you say “I’m married” or getting married, it’s a promise you make to the person you love, and I think that promise creates so much. It creates so much potential, and is understood by so many people.’

Black, who won the Academy Award in 2009 for his screenplay for the film Milk, has been deeply involved in the fight for same-sex marriage in the US. He was a founding member of the American Foundation for Equal Rights which successfully fought in the US Supreme Court for marriage equality in California.

He recalls the dreams he said in his speech the night he accepted his Oscar: ‘There’s two things I said: I said full federal equality, and we have that now in terms of marriage; I also said that one day I hoped that I’d be able to fall in love and get married. I never dreamed in that time I would meet somebody and fall in love and get engaged. I just never knew if that was something I’d be able to appreciate in my own lifetime.’

I wish them both much happiness.  I was especially touched by Lance's comments because my husband often describes me to others as "Someone who Completely Gets Him."

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. 

 

Sean Penn Wins Best Actor for Milk

I was happy to see Sean Penn win the best actor award for his portrayal of Harvey Milk in the Movie milk. Hopefully, between his win and that of Dustin Lance Black some people who might not otherwise see the film will reconsider and see it. Better yet, if they do see the movie, perhaps it will make some of them rethink their attitudes towards LGBT Americans. I am also very grateful for Penn's remarks concerning gay rights as he accepted his Oscar. Interestingly, the Times of India gave more coverage to the anti-gay protesters mentioned by Penn than the LA Times:

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"I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support," Penn said as he accepted his golden statuette. "We've got to have equal rights for everyone." He dismissed a protest outside the glittering Hollywood ceremony by banner-waving opponents of gay marriage, which four months ago was overturned in California following a referendum. The demonstraters were "very sad in a way, because it's a demonstration of such emotional cowardice to be so afraid to be extending the same rights to a fellow man as you would want for yourself," Penn said after the ceremony.

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I do agree with Penn that someday the anti-gay elements in U.S. society will be viewed with the same disdain as the rabid segregationists of an earlier era. I sincerely hope that that day comes sooner as opposed to later. My congratulations to Sean Penn.