01/20/2006
Spawn of Brokeback: Mr. Sun muses on the possibilities of remaking other classics to fit a same-sex sensibility.
Washington House passes gay rights bill that would outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation. Now, it's on to the Senate.
Al Sharpton: Bush used the Black community's fear of gays to get elected.
Maryland judge strikes down 33-year-old law banning gay marriage: "Although tradition and societal values are important, they cannot be given so much weight that they alone will justify a discriminatory statutory classification."
Posted 12:05 PM EST by Andy Towle in Gay Marriage | Permalink
Like it?
Subscribe to FREE Towleroad daily headlines with our RSS feed!
RECENT STORIES:
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.
Good for this Judge. Now let's see who screams "activist judge" first. My bet is on Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. Dobson is a possibility too.
Posted by: Robert In WeHo | Jan 20, 2006 3:05:41 PM
I don't know about Pat. He might be too busy with what is going on here in his hometown, Virginia Beach. The state House just passed a gay marriage ban for the second year (76-20). Now it goes to the Senate to be on the November ballot. Marriage was already defined as being between a man and a woman back in the 1970’s. Now they are just “sealing” the deal so to speak.
Pat should really be riled up though over the blocking of a ban on out of state gay adopters putting their names on the child's birth certificate. Then again… there might be an African country with a diamond or gold mine that Pat hasn’t “reached out to” yet to distract him (i.e. the Operation Blessing scandal, just one of many with that evil man).
I'll put down five on Falwell. That's my bet.
Posted by: RP | Jan 20, 2006 3:33:15 PM
Here's another brilliant essay by the San Francisco "Chronicle's" Mark Morford [apparently straight, BTW]. I hope everyone will join me in writing to thank him at mmorford@sfgate.com
Sam Alito On Brokeback Mountain
What do the bitter neocon nominee and the amazing Oscar-bound film have in common?
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, January 20, 2006
There is this theory, more of a truism really, tossed about like a fuzzy beach ball by the gurus and the masters and the mystics since Jesus was but a lint ball of possibility in the Great Belly Button of Time.
It goes like this: When human consciousness expands, for whatever reason and with whatever stimulation and even if you can only measure it in hairsbreadth, when our nasty habit of harsh judgment falls away and people begin to get a little bit, you know, lighter, there is always, as sure as there's someone who hates the sunrise, a clampdown, a recoil, a desperate need by the terrified and ever-paranoid conservative sect to, you know, put a quick stop to this so-called awakening crapola ASA-damn-P.
As soon as people begin realizing there's more to this brief little slice of existence than hate and war and the constant drumbeat of fear, there's always resistance, a reactive sneer at the idea that people might be waking up, even a little, and it's all in the name of protecting the status quo and defending the power base and not upsetting any of those carefully wrought prejudices, about making sure everyone stays quiet and doesn't ask any difficult questions of the Authority.
Religious groups make phone calls and complain. Big chunks of money get thrown into the pockets of sanctimonious politicians. Quasi-religious bonk-job leaders declare sex and music and gay people the source of all woes and vices and diseases. Ugly new laws get passed. And yes, bitter, convulsive justices get appointed to the Supreme Court.
Just like, you know, right now.
Witness, won't you, the confluent forces, the twin streams of conflicting culture represented by the amazing "Brokeback Mountain" movie phenomenon, a spare and sad and highly controversial little indie-style flick that is shaking up the homophobic community and raking in the Golden Globes and which now seems a shoo-in to win an Oscar or four, as compared and contrasted with, say, the humorless, depressing, dry-as-death Samuel Alito Supreme Court nomination. Oh yes, we have a match. Do you see it?
Look closer. On the one hand, here is the astounding reach and power of this rare and striking little film, an emotional tinderbox of a movie that, in the wrong hands or with the wrong marketing or if it had been off pitch by just this much, could have very easily been trashed and quickly dismissed, would have hobbled the careers of two up-and-coming hunk actors, been mocked across the board and demonized by the religious right as revolting gay propaganda, the source of all ills, proof of the existence of the devil himself.
Of course, the latter is still happening (isn't it always?), but the amazing thing is, no one seems to care. The screech of the right's homophobes is being easily drowned out by the fact that this astonishing, pitch-perfect film is now considered a movie that, quite literally, changes minds. Shifts perceptions. That moves the human experiment forward and makes people truly think about sex and gender and love and not in the way that, say, "Pride & Prejudice" makes you think because that kind of thinking is merely sweet and harmless, whereas "Brokeback" slaps bigotry and intolerance upside its knobby little head and induces heated discussions of the film's dynamics and politics and ideas of love over a bottle of wine and some deep curious sighing.
That's one side. On the other hand, here we have this relentless neocon spiritual death wish, as evidenced by the imminent appointment of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, yet another dour white male judge who, by all evidence, will do everything in his power to keep America's spiritual, humanitarian and sexual progress -- you know, the exact kind of universal awareness illuminated by intensely intimate movies like "Brokeback" -- locked in the ironclad box of anti-women, anti-gay, power-über-alles conservative thinking for the next three decades or more.
Of course you may say: Oh please, this is just silly, no way is there a direct connection between Alito and "Brokeback." I mean come on, one's just a heartbreaking gay love story and one's a massive disheartening political maneuver and they simply have no direct correlation in this world as we know it and to draw a correlation is to, well, make stuff up.
To which I say: You are right, but only a little. Of course Alito is not about to be appointed to deflect "Brokeback"'s message per se, but rather, he is being installed in general reaction to, in attack on, in preparation for what "Brokeback" and its ilk represent. Which is, of course, the aforementioned awakening, the shift, the movement toward something new and different and open. Do you see?
This is the ever-present push-pull of the culture. This is how we stumble toward the light, gasping and bleeding and with painful rope burns on our wrists. After all, there is no progress forward -- intellectual, spiritual, sexual or otherwise -- without a concomitant blood-curdling scream from the power brokers and the religiously terrified to hold it all back. Change brings fear. Sexuality brings confusion. For every person who has his rigid homophobic ideology shattered by "Brokeback"'s emotional hammer, there is a confused neocon who redoubles his efforts to replant it.
But it doesn't matter. No matter the heat and bile of the resistance, no matter how brutish or sanctimonious the stranglehold of our leadership, no matter how many complaints about nipples or wailings about intelligent design or accusations of a "gay agenda," no matter how many uptight neocon judges they appoint, progress still manages to find the cracks, to slip through the holes, to seek the sun. Consciousness expands anyway. The river flows on. The awakening continues. It is always the way.
And the Bushes and the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds, the Gonzalezes and the James Dobsons and the Sam Alitos of the world, they can only stand at the base of that mountain of new awareness and pass their laws and beat their chests and scream their resistance as the mystics and the masters just smile that ageless, knowing smile and walk away.
Posted by: Leland | Jan 20, 2006 4:38:26 PM
The Rev. Al once again kicks ass. If anyone listened to him during the Demo debates, they heard a man of so much honesty, and common sense, as to make Kerry et al sound like the generic pols that they are. Too many people roll their eyes when they hear his name...but god bless him. At best he might only be a voice..but he's a goddamn good voice.
Posted by: PSMike | Jan 20, 2006 6:30:16 PM
I'm so happy to hear Al Sharpton saying what I've been saying since 2004. Karl Rove played the black community and Bush never even had to shake their hands. Just more proof that the black community is very far from being an advocate to the gay community as the gay community has acted as an advocate to them.
Since 2004, I view the my relationship as a gay man with the black community in a somewhat different light.
Posted by: Chad Hanging | Jan 20, 2006 7:16:46 PM
>>homophobia in the black community
I grew up in a city that is over 70% black. I've never known homophobia to be higher in blacks than in whites. In fact, my Gay black friends were more likely to have acceptance from their friends and family than my Gay white friends. Black men and women I've worked with almost never had a problem with my being Gay. Every incident of homophobia I have encountered was with white co-workers and white employers.
I think blacks should be afraid of Al Sharpton.
Posted by: Jay Croce | Jan 20, 2006 7:26:10 PM
Leland -
Thank you so much for posting that essay. It's really wonderful - all the more so if the writer is straight. Nice to know the whole country hasn't gone through the looking glass into Upside-Down World, as it has so often seemed in the GWB era.
Posted by: JOE 2 | Jan 20, 2006 7:44:22 PM
July 13,1998, in the article "Winner in Brawley suit says victory is bittersweet," Tawana Brawley, a 15-year-old black female, was found in a garbage bag with dog feces smeared on her body and racial epithets scrawled on her, after disappearing from her home on November 1987. With the help of Al Sharpton, she claimed a gang of white law enforcement officers had abducted and raped her. One of these accused men was former prosecutor Steven Pagones. Eventually, a grand jury pronounced her story a hoax, exonerating Pagones. The jury found Sharpton liable for $65,000 of the total damages for making seven defamatory statements about Pagones, many of which included Al Sharpton calling Pagones a "rapist." Sharpton never apologized for his remarks against Pagones. The case was obviously racially inflamed with the help of Al Sharpton, who demonstrated his unrepentant hatred toward whites.
"The Crown Heights Riot & It's Aftermath," January 1993, by Philip Gourevitch, a car driven by Yosef Lifsh, a Hasidic Jew, went out of control in Crown Heights. A black seven-year-old, Gavin Cato, was killed, and his seven-year-old cousin, Angela Cato, was badly injured.
When the driver stepped out of his car to help the child he had hit, angry black bystanders beat and robbed him before police could reach the scene. As the ambulance arrived to help the Cato children under the car, medics decided that Lifsh should be placed in the first ambulance. Seeing this, the black crowds began to gather, crying "racism," and chanting "Jews, Jews, Jews."
Later that day, the angry black mob came upon Yankel Rosenbaum, a twenty nine year old Orthodox Jew, shouting, "get the Jew" and "kill the Jew." Rosenbaum was stabbed and beaten. Later that day Rosenbaum died after receiving medical treatment at Kings County Hospital.
True to form, Al Sharpton rushed to Crown Heights. He called for the arrest of Lifsh, and even pressured Brooklyn district attorney Charles Hynes into convening a Grand Jury, which found no cause for an indictment. Al Sharpton then spoke at Gavino Cato's funeral, saying,"The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. It's an accident to allow an apartheid ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. It is an accident to think that we will keep crying and never stand up and call for justice. What type of city do we have that would lie on our children and allow politics to rise above the blood of innocent babies? Have we lost all our moral fiber? Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights."
Sharpton organized crowds of protestors, screaming about "bloodsucking Jews" and "Jew bastards" and threatening to "burn the building down." Finally, Roland James Smith, Jr., got Sharpton's message. On Friday, December 8, at 10:12 a.m., Smith walked into Freddy's Fashion Mart, pulled out a gun, ordered all the black customers to leave, spilled paint thinner on several bins of clothing and set them on fire, resulting in the deaths of eight people, including himself. Isn't it wonderful, how Al the racist Sharpton, can throw around words like "white interloper" and "bloodsucking Jews" in public, and the "elite" media conveniently misses it again! But I don't miss it. I see Sharpton for the kind of guy he really is: a low life liberal and racist who hates Jews.
Posted by: Jay Croce | Jan 20, 2006 7:44:23 PM
Thanks Leland for posting Mark's incredible piece of writing and insight.
Posted by: randy | Jan 20, 2006 11:11:08 PM