You know the problem with the arts these days? In case you didn’t know, Philip Kennicott will be happy to tell you. The problem with the arts, he says, is that they’re homophobic.

Quit laughing.

In a recent Washington Post column, Kennicott takes issue with “a litany of shameful events and grievances” committed against homosexuals in the arts, from “the ‘super-macho’ ethos of the American abstract expressionists” to the recent removal of an explicit exhibit from the Smithsonian Museum. Basically, he believes that despite the disproportionate contributions of homosexuals to the arts world, the arts world has failed to honor them appropriately. And he believes that the only way to do this is to make sure that museums are upfront about (1) the sexual proclivities of artists and their subjects, and (2) the subjects’ role, if any, “the iconography of same-sex eroticism.”

For instance, since Saint Sebastian has been appropriated as a homosexual icon, museums are supposed to mention this wherever they display paintings of him. Never mind that he was not himself homosexual.

And if all this openness makes museums seem a little less “family friendly” to some, well, they just need to get with the times. “‘Family’ is now understood to include gay parents, married gay couples and people with gay children, and the absence of basic information about the role of same-sex desire in art history has become an overt sin of omission,” Kennicott explains. Because society is now more accepting of various forms of sexuality, clearly, kids need more sexual information shoved in their faces! (Since, you know, they’re not getting enough of it already from the culture around them.) (more…)

Something happened in 1991 that my daddy never believed possible: Tommy Lee Jones played a gay man.

And the shrill and very vocal faction of the homosexual community cried foul at not only his portrayal, but of the portrayal of homosexuals in “The Silence of the Lambs.” GLAAD led a protest of “Basic Instinct” before the movie had even wrapped principal photography, and the controversy continued when Tri-Star released the picture during so-called Awards Season in 1992.

The nominees:

“J.F.K.” – Great filmmaking and mythmaking.

“The Silence of the Lambs” – The winner, released all the way back in February of 1991, and a genuine crowd pleaser.

“Beauty and the Beast” – I’m not saying it’s a bad movie, but it’s inclusion smacks of tokenism, as in, “There. We nominated an animated movie. Now leaves us alone.”

“Bugsy” – Another good movie, but I remember thinking, “If this gangster movie wins after ‘Goodfellas’ lost, I’ll threaten a boycott like my gay friends did.”

“The Prince of Tides” – The stink here was that Babs wasn’t nominated for best director. It had to have stung that Ridley Scott was nominated instead for directing “Thelma & Louise,” a wrongly politicized road movie about two women on the run from the law. Babs also missed out on scoring one for women when John Singleton was nominated for “Boyz N The Hood.” The irony, I guess, is that all these years later, both “The Prince of Tides” and “Boyz N The Hood” feel like TV movies.

What should have been nominated:

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So in a recent issue of the Advocate, aging actor Richard Chamberlain told fellow gay actors to stay in the closet.

Chamberlain, famous for heart-throbby roles as docs and brooding priests, kept his gayhood secret for decades because he feared it would destroy his career. He says, ‘Despite all the wonderful advances that have been made, it’s still dangerous for an actor to talk about that in our extremely misguided culture.’

So yeah, it’s our culture’s fault. Our extremely gay culture, one that not only accepts all things gay, but lavishes upon them stupendous wealth and accolades.

Whatever, Chamberlain’s advice comes at a perfect time for people like me who need to write stuff: just days after the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

How hilarious is it that, as the military now dumps that strategy, a Hollywood icon is imploring actors to embrace it!

Anyway, I wonder why we don’t demand from Hollywood, what Hollywood demands from the military. I have absolutely no data to back this up, but I bet the percentage of gays employed in film exceeds those in foxholes.

Which is why homophobia seems worse in Tinseltown. The fact is, the troops can handle gays; Hollywood can’t. (more…)

So let’s say you’re at some restaurant, enjoying your chai tea and veggie burger, reading a worn out copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves, and in a booth nearby you hear a father and son arguing. The conversation gets nasty, as the pop says, “There are solutions to this!  No son of mine is going to be gay!”

So what do you do? Well, an ABC show is named exactly that – and the father and son are actually actors fabricating this scene, waiting to see if someone like you will intervene.

It’s a morality experiment: the man berates his son for being gay – and if you don’t do anything – well, you’re just an awful, cowardly homophobe. Later, the performers question bystanders as to why they didn’t interrupt, and of course are judged for lack of involvement.

In a word, this is “riyeht,” which is Vulcan for crap.

I’ll tell you why: these conflicts never happen in public. Look, I pretty much sleep in bars – so I know this. So why build hypothetical situations based on scenes that only happen in corny made-for-TV movies made a decade ago?

Cuz it’s easy: All the network is doing is staging gay bullying stuff because these days, it makes for easy, manufactured outrage. I doubt they’d create a scenario where a tea partier is called a Nazi, or a police officer is labeled a fascist – because that just doesn’t make for a romantic stunt. (more…)

GLAAD is just one of those organizations like PETA that you can’t help but feel sorry for.  Their stars are waning; their time has passed.  PETA can only grab a headline if they cough up enough money for some D-lister to disrobe for a photoshoot, and GLAAD can’t accomplish much beyond the occasional censorship potshot in Hollywood.  It’s odd that we’ve been highlighting the political divide between Clint Howard and his brother, Ron, for the past week or so, as it’s Ron, the orthodox progressive, who’s catching heat from GLAAD currently.  Howard is the director of a new Vince Vaughn picture titled The Dilemma, and GLAAD has deemed it homophobic, offensive– all that stuff– because Vaughn’s character says “Electric cars are gay.”

The full-fledged ire of GLAAD, straight from the top of the organization, is laughable.  President Jarrett Barrios says, “There has been a rash of bullying, some leading to suicides, much of it because of the widespread belief that it’s somehow OK to say things about gay people that it is not OK to say about other groups. Comments like those in the movie make it seem OK to beat up gay people.”  So, electric cars are gay = it’s okay to commit violence against gay people.  Check.

Make no mistake:  it is an awful tragedy that Tyler Clementi killed himself because of the malicious, despicable humiliation he was subjected to.  To equivocate that with a goofy putdown of electric cars (and GLAAD does not know the context of this line; sounds like something to establish early on in Vaughn’s character arc that he’s insensitive) is not only moronic but as hypocritical as Fred Phelps asking for some peace and quiet at a funeral.  Why, you may say? One word:  teabaggers. (more…)

So, the Muslim investors championing the construction of the new mosque near Ground Zero claim it’s all about strengthening the relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim world.

As an American, I believe they have every right to build the mosque – after all, if they buy the land and they follow the law – who can stop them?

Which is, why, in the spirit of outreach, I’ve decided to do the same thing.

I’m announcing tonight, that I am planning to build and open the first gay bar that caters not only to the west, but also Islamic gay men. To best express my sincere desire for dialogue, the bar will be situated next to the mosque Park51, in an available commercial space.

This is not a joke. I’ve already spoken to a number of investors, who have pledged their support in this bipartisan bid for understanding and tolerance. (more…)

A lot of Republicans may feel that we’d be best-served to avoid this issue altogether.  As a Conservative, however, I feel compelled to explain why many of us out there are opposed to the currently proposed same-sex marriage bills and not to civil unions.  Plus, it’s not everyday that I get to put on a Leprechaun costume!

Note: No tasteless holiday parades were actually performed during the making of this video. (more…)

John Nolte’s review of “Brüno,” a film I haven’t yet seen, tackles Sasha Baron Cohen’s previous film “Borat,” a film I have seen about twenty times. That being said, Nolte is dead-on in his appraisal of the film: it found favor with the left-wing elitists because it poked fun at us regular folk. But in praising “Borat,” they revealed something about themselves, something I’ve known to be true since the summer of 1994.

That was the best year for movies that I can recall. That summer alone we had “Forrest Gump,” “True Lies,” “Speed,” and everyone was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Cannes winner “Pulp Fiction.” And we also had “The Lion King.” I remember the critic for my campus newspaper, The Red & Black (Go Dawgs!), panned the film, noting that the “Circle of Life” song, sung by a gay man, was really about keeping groups of people, particularly minorities, in their place. I thought this was bizarre and brought it up with some of my classmates. (more…)

If anyone wrote a script like this, no one would believe it.

But I already read the book.

That they even went to Iran in the first place was an abomination, especially given their three-hour gay rights infomercial called The Oscars just five days earlier.

And it only kept getting worse. (more…)