04/07/2006
Novelist who penned Whatever Happened to Baby Jane is dead at 85: "His stock in trade were stories of aging relatives, often siblings or cousins, who were living together while struggling with identity issues, rapidly declining mental acuity — and thoughts of mayhem."
2007: Queen Mary to set sail on a transatlantic crossing with a boat full of gays.
Senior US Bishop William Skystad calls on all Roman Catholics to support the federal anti-gay marriage amendment: ""There is a growing sense shared by many people, including a wide range of religious leaders, that a marriage protection amendment is the only federal-level action that ultimately will protect and preserve the institution of marriage. In a matter of months we will have the opportunity once again to stand publicly in support of marriage as the God-given union of a man and a woman. I am aware that the time is short for taking action, so I urge you to do whatever you can, given the situation and the resources available to you."
Florida to get its first gay rodeo this weekend.
Mandisa would not be comfortable performing at a gay event, according to a post-Idol interview she did with the Advocate: "Based on what I believe, I'm not an advocate for [being gay], so it's nothing I would take part in." There has been speculation that the portly diva may have been booted from the show after a gay voting-bloc discovered her anti-gay affiliations.
Writer Peter Tolan played a joke on Rescue Me cast hunk Steven Pasquale by writing himself into the script of the Denis Leary fireman drama. Tolan wrote himself into a script and had Pasquale's character "come out of the closet and tell him he loved him" according to Page Six. Pasquale freaked out: "When Steven read the script, he stormed off set, saying he had already done this on 'Six Feet Under,' and 'I'm not doing it again.'"
Washington Post upset that Rosie O'Donnell's HBO family cruise documentary portrays gays and lesbians as "scrubbed-up" and "politely tidy" rather than sexual predators and drag queens: "O'Donnell almost robs her subjects of their sexual identity in the pursuit of making them wholesome. In short, there is no gay cruising on this gay cruise."
Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett team up for reality show that will give filmmakers a shot at a studio deal.
Posted 9:41 AM EST by Andy Towle in Elsewhere | Permalink
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I clicked on the link to americablog and found it odd to see Tom Shales raked over the coals by so many people as being anti-gay, homophobic and right-wing. I know him and he's anything but that. He just comes from a different generation, when being gay was something to hide. He is very lonely and often depressed, with health problems.
Posted by: Ricky | Apr 7, 2006 9:58:31 AM
"O'Donnell almost robs her subjects of their sexual identity in the pursuit of making them wholesome. In short, there is no gay cruising on this gay cruise."
When are people going to realize that being gay isn't synonymous with sexual predators and whores. The Washington Post makes me sick. Kudo's to Rosie for depicting "normal" homosexuals and not the ones portrayed on "Queer as Folk". I have to admit I despised that show. While it did demonstrate ONE small aspect of the gay community, it gave any one who wasn't gay or opposed homosexuality more fodder for homophobia. I laughed with sickness when I heard any gay man talk positively about shows like "QAF", it was equivalent to hammering a nail in our own coffins. Granted, we can't live our lives the way THEY want us to, that is everything we do and watch shouldn't be based on whether we're being "judged", but the negative impact of such horrible depictions only bit us in the ass. Rosie O'Donnell challenges the stereotype we ourselves have fostered, and I hope more people watch this documentary than "QAF" or other shows like it...
Posted by: CJ | Apr 7, 2006 10:00:55 AM
Hey Andy, I want to share a news story about the incident up at the University of Vermont which you posted on yesterday. I wrote to the national HQ of Phi Gamma Delta (of which I am a member) and would like to share their response with you. I'm having difficulty going thru your email system. Could you email me your email address and I'll send it to you directly? Thanks, FHT8@aol.com
Posted by: Fred | Apr 7, 2006 10:25:11 AM
On target, CJ. I had to literally stop up my ears when I sensed a gay man about to gush over QAF. Such a consistent depiction of us as needy, self-centered slimes or imbeciles, fixated on where the next blow job is coming from.
Go, Rosie. Hey, a lot of us ARE boring as shit.
Posted by: Jacko | Apr 7, 2006 10:44:42 AM
Here was my response I emailed to the Post and Tom Shales:
Rosie’s Cruise’ Steers Away from Deep Waters
By Tom Shales
“It's as if the primary concern of Rosie O'Donnell, who captained the project, was presenting to the mainstream TV audience a scrubbed-up, politely tidy image of gay men and women -- a portrait meticulously devoid of the drag queens, pierced nipples and campy vamping one often sees when a local TV station rushes off to cover a gay-themed event.
O'Donnell almost robs her subjects of their sexual identity in the pursuit of making them wholesome. In short, there is no gay cruising on this gay cruise.”
It’s difficult for me to put into words how offensive this article is. Not only it is devoid of factual truth, but it also a vehicle for the authors own agenda and hate-filled propaganda.
This portrays the gay community as nothing more than dramatic, out-casted, sexual predators, when in fact straight men compose the sexual deviancy of the gay community. It should be noted that 70% of the men involved in gay cruising are married straight men looking for homosexual encounters on a hidden and regular basis. Further more, in regards to “cruising”, you might be interested in contacting the Dept. Of Homeland Security, a group in which a member was recently arrested when attempting to engage in sexual activity with an under age girl.
A good reason most people witness drag queens and pierced nipples through local news coverage is due to pointed editing. Gay men and women, like the ones shown in Rosie’s documentary, are not as shocking and do not get rating like the one the author pointed out as missing. However, they exist in numbers a great deal larger.
As I recall, the is media a tool of truth. Not one of pushing ones own defamatory and anti-gay personal opinion. The Washington Post has obviously lowered its standards to that below a supermarket tabloid. I suggest in the future, not only using a fact checker prior to the publishing of an article, but to have a sense of responsibility in reporting the news.
Sincerely,
Michael J. Kashey
Posted by: Mike | Apr 7, 2006 10:52:33 AM
RE: Rosie's Cruise...
Its the exact same reason I boycott the Toronto Pride Parade every year. More than any other event with a 'gay theme,' it reinforces negative stereotypes on such a base level and huge, accesible scale, I find it patently offensive and embarassing as a homosexual who is proud to be boring.
Posted by: Seangstm | Apr 7, 2006 11:04:42 AM
I think we should not loose sight of the fact that both parts make up what is the gay community. It is wrong for us to judge either as right or wrong, but to look at the homophobia coming from the sorce that would love nothing more than for us to go at each other, instead of the bigotry and hatred from them.
While you may not love drag queens or men with nipples peirced, they have every right to be at gay events, as do the so called "scrubbed-up" "wholesome" queers.
Posted by: patrick nyc | Apr 7, 2006 11:59:10 AM
Guys, calm down about Tom Shales. He is not the enemy. He has been consistently gay positive in his reviews over the years. And if you stop to read THIS column of his before flying off the handle you can see it's not anti-gay in the least. He's not saying anything agaisnt gays or gay families, he's recognizing reality. And he was lamenting that Rosie's show is boring to watch - which it is. Preachy "good intentions" shows usually are.
Posted by: Ricky | Apr 7, 2006 12:21:34 PM
Re Rosie's cruise:
No cruising on this gay cruise?!? It was a family event you morons. What's wrong with these people?
Posted by: Zack | Apr 7, 2006 12:36:28 PM
its the QM2 not QM... big difference. glad to help.
Posted by: M | Apr 7, 2006 12:53:13 PM
Some of the comments show how narrow minded a lot of people -- gays and heteros -- can be. I am proud to be gay together with drag queens, leather daddies, dyke bikers, and lipstick lesbians. And a few gay families don't hurt the mix either. Diversity and tolerance should be the key words. If you can't celebrate gay pride with the rest of us maybe you are just plain homosexual and not gay.
Posted by: John | Apr 7, 2006 1:26:17 PM
Good for you Patrick. I admit that I'm one of those scrubbed up, boring, suburban queers. An exciting night for my partner and I is doing the laundry. However, I love the drag queens, bears, and leathermen. The guys who rant against them might be interrupted as homophobic by the right wing (although I doubt they are). The wingnuts are more than willing to take anything you say and twist it to fit their ideaology. All of you scrubbed up, boring guys need to be at the parades and festivals, so that the media is presented with the true face of the GLBT community.
Posted by: Mike in the Tundra | Apr 7, 2006 1:31:59 PM
Why would there be cruising on a FAMILY cruise? It would be totally inappropriate.
Posted by: Kevin | Apr 7, 2006 6:58:33 PM
If Tom Shales is not gay, then he needs to apologize and correct himself, and not just use his gay friends or son or whatever as a human shield, the way Gene Shalit did.
Look at the column and it's simply a huge stereotype, that assumes that gay people are hiding their true nature if they don't have multiple-partner sex in front of their own children.
Tom Shales, maybe that's the way you would behave, but gay parents just aren't like that. Obviously, he needed to see this film most of all because he can't give up his stereotype or imagine that even just 500 couples in the entire fucking world wouldn't turn an unthinkably EXPENSIVE cruise with CHILDREN into a bathhouse or a backroom.
The right thing for him to say is...Yes, I said something mostrously homophobic and stereotypical, and I apologize unconditionally and will try to unlearn all of the hurtful prejudices that are in my heart before I write them in a column.
I don't deny it when I say something that I realize is racist or sexist after it's left my mouth. I see it, and realize how much we are poisoned by hatred even when we don't want to be and make a resolution to treat people more like human individuals. The horrible conservative Reagan way is: keep all your prejudices and be proud of them. That's just wrong, and that's the ignorance that Reagan, Bush and Shales are guilty of. Any person is liable to say something hateful by mistake. Denying it, and blaming everyone else in sight makes it worse.
Posted by: brian nyc | Apr 7, 2006 7:13:22 PM
The irony of the stereotype.
Heterosexuals have a subcultural subset of individuals who live their lives on the libidinal plane, the Hugh Heffner-types sans pajamas, bunnies or mansions. Well, maybe some are true believers and emulators. LOL.
The stereotype, firmly planted in the 1950's, is Mr. and Mrs. Oswald Nelson, prominent Roman Catholic family, with two sons, David and Eric, ages 10 and 6. They are monogamous, productive, and above all, attend Mass regularly on Sundays and days of obligation. Of course, sans the Catholicism, the rest of the nation had a WASP equivalent to the Nelson and Arnaz families.
The gay stereotype is of course, the Oscar Wilde model as opposed to the masculine soldier or pirate of centuries past. The stats in Canada look better than the US, but here are facts...Monogamous couples are found in all but one county in the entire country. There are millions raising children despite any or few rights, privileges and protections.
I firmly believe that the lesbian families have created the necessary level of acceptance for we males. Their legitimate struggle against patriarchal heterosexism, like their initial support in the early days of the AIDS crisis, suggest that they have been the most effective spokespersons against the male-dominated theocon haters.
Thank the women. They deserve the respect as they help dismantle the vestiges of patriarchalism in the Church and society.
Posted by: Raymond | Apr 7, 2006 8:54:39 PM
I have believed this for decades. The US and Canadian Roman Catholic Churches are on the verge of implosion and schism.
The Fuhrer Papen is the self-loathing homophobe that their Communion has needed to implement that process.
The silenced hierarchs and periti are about ready to explode into open rebellion.
The Augustinian view of validity of Orders and Sacraments makes a split possible theologically.
Posted by: Raymond | Apr 7, 2006 8:58:49 PM
Tom Shales may be gay but his failure to recognize that becoming a family tends to change peoples priorities/interests is akin to some morons failure to realize that Queer As Folk was a gay soap opera. Once people have children, they put away some of the trappings of youth. Their attitudes towards them may not totally change but they understand they are moving into another period of life and energy that was once reserved for getting their drag make-up on and heading to the leather bar would be better applied to diapers and storytelling. Because maybe, just maybe they care about thier children and investing in them.
QAF was a soap opera. Melodrama. I never once thought that All My Children or the god-awful Passions was trying to depict the real life struggles of the heterosexual with their beautiful rich families, constant cheating, murders, lying etc. Its pure pulp entertainment w/ just enough reality to it to keep it from floating out of the atmosphere. Take it for what it was, dont put it on such a high standard considering practically nothing like came to US television before it. Hell, even QAF took a serious look at the supposed "conforming" of gay culture by the influx of gay marriage/families.
Posted by: Toto | Apr 7, 2006 11:26:05 PM
I might have seen QAF as a soap if it had been one of many dozens of shows with a specifically gay cast of characters. It wasn't. It was pretty much the only such series available to and viewed by millions, and the people behind it knew precisely that.
As for any 'serious' look that garbage took at anything, I guess I missed it. I was too busy kicking the screen in at this virtually sole depiction of homosexual lives as being purely hedonistic and/or retributively pitiful.
Posted by: Jacko | Apr 7, 2006 11:58:44 PM
Toto-
Cowlip (Cowan and Lippman)had an opportunity, as gay producers ostensibly in a thirty plus year relationship, and re-creating Pittsburg, PA in Toronto, ON, Canada, to produce the ONLY drama on television.
Rather, they sought to provide us with life in West Hollywood, CA, complete with the necessary bath and gym scenes. Psychosexual immaturity and dysfunctions informed the writing staff, who wrote scripts as if they continuously perused the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual for the next aberrative act.
Stereotypes were solidified. Women mate and men troll for life. That the producers chose to reproduce WeHo, call it Pittsburg, and use our community on Church Street, when full rights were being given in our country, shows that Viacom wanted a celebration of neocon negative stereotypes and got it.
All my Children, and other soap operas, are seen by viewers, especially the target audience, as not representing normal heterosexual mores. There are countless programmes and tonnes of examples out there about all phases of heterosexual culture....the good, the bad, and the truly evil.
Let me state my obvious reality. The majority of gays and lesbians in North America do NOT live a hedonistic lifestyle in one of the major urban centres of Canada or the United States. The majority of gays and lesbians in Canada and the United States are nesters and not "players".
Especially since the age of AIDS, when the Boomer and early Gen X community was decimated, the tendency has been to mate even in those urban centres once seen as the mecca for hedonism on the gay cultural side.
Let me go further. There IS a gay-by boom. Sure two thirds or more families are lesbian, but gay men - and masculine gay men, are breeding or adopting. That is a fact are one third of the gay families and growing all the time. I say HOORAH !!!!
There is, to be sure, self-loathing gays who have been entrapped by "ex-gay" movements. This is tragic. We have the fact that self-loathing gays are working with and for, and more sadly, are helping the theocon dominionists destroy our community's attempt to seek equal justice and a clearer and more contextual theological definition.
We have spoken often about the two out of ten gays who voted Bush in 2000 and 2004, and vote for homophobes and more, work for and with them in advancing their agendaes.
They join men and women related to powerful political and religious American figures who live with gay significant others, are "out" and work against equal rights.
Sixty or more years ago, there were few if any gay bars outside the gay meccas. Straights or organised crime owned those that existed. Vice cops sat in bars to entrap, arrest and incarcerate. Psychiatrists used the terms now made famous by the Fuhrer Papen when he wrote the Halloween letter as head of the Inquisition.
Gay and lesbian Christians in gay-affirming churches are also forming a bulwark against those who reject Christianity as yet another hateful oppressor in their lives.
Posted by: Raymond | Apr 8, 2006 4:03:59 AM
Jacko
Wow... just wow. It seems you totally missed the last 2 seasons when it wasnt about that. It seems people despised the look of the show and somehow needed it to reaffirm the legitmacy of their existance in order to enjoy it. Too bad.
Posted by: Toto | Apr 8, 2006 5:03:22 AM
Toto,
You are kidding right? Seriously... seriously... I watched the show, albeit reluctantly, and it wasn't any different than the other previous years. You are missing the point. There are not any realistic "gay" oriented shows that depict homosexuality as "normal" as with the variety of heterosexual programs. I had a lot of people, straight AND gay, ask questions after watching QAF. "Do guys really do that?" "Are drugs THAT rampant?" etc. etc. etc. When there is very little programming available to the mass public that protrays a healthy, anti-stereotype view of homosexuality to the public, QAF (which was extremely advertised) received the most recognition. Granted, "we" may know this is just a "gay soap opera", but how can we expect the general public to understand this when all they are seeing are "QAF" and "Will and Grace"??? Think about it...
Posted by: CJ | Apr 8, 2006 12:44:20 PM
Geez you guys... since when does poking fun at Rosie O'Donnell for being sanctimonious equate with being rabidly homophobic? You're really blowing Tom's remarks wildly out of proportion.
Posted by: jaykayess | Apr 10, 2006 10:12:04 AM