Note to Andrew Sullivan: Don’t Blame Breitbart For My Thought Crimes

Dear Andrew Sullivan,

Thank you for your Halloween Daily Dish in response to my Big Hollywood blog about the latest LGBT assault on Mormons.  We actually met once, briefly, at DC Pride, circa 1990.  I had never heard of you or The New Republic.  I do remember liking your accent.

More recently, about five years ago, I shot you an email to say thanks for a column you’d written about the threat of Islam to gays.  You sent a nice thank you back.  I’ve also admired your calling the hate crimes bill “boutique legislation” and urging your readers to stop sending checks to the Human Rights Campaign.

I appreciate the restraint of your posting, “A Gay Voice Against Marriage Equality,” though the title concerns me a little, as the last thing I want is for LGBTers to assume I am some kind of Anita Bryant (she was very active when I was coming out, and we don’t need a repeat of that).  Few things are as terrifying as the thought of becoming the object of gay fury (which I understand you’ve had some experience with).  It’s a sorry state of affairs when people within the gay community no longer feel they can speak freely without risking ostracism or threats.  I sometimes wonder if there should be a hate crimes bill to protect gay people from other gay people.

That said, there are a couple of points in your piece I’d like to address.

First, one does not have to ”search high and low” to find lesbians and gays who are suspicious of the cause formerly known as same-sex marriage.  Contrary to popular mythology, not all of us feel a pressing need for “marriage equality,” nor do we derive our self-worth from the state.  I know gay Californians who voted for Prop 8 last year because they sincerely believe it is in the best interest of children (some of whom will grow up to be gay), and of society as a whole (which includes gay people), to uphold the ideal of the man-woman nuclear family. (more…)

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Tags: 8: The Mormon Proposition, Alan Dershowitz, Andrew Breitbart, Andrew Sullivan, Chastity Bono
Posted Nov 5th 2009 at 5:03 am in Culture, Featured Story, Politics | 256154180 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/11/05/note-to-andrew-sullivan-dont-blame-breitbart-for-my-thought-crimes/Note+to+Andrew+Sullivan%3A+Don%27t+Blame+Breitbart+For+My+Thought+Crimes2009-11-05+13%3A03%3A35Charles+Winecoff

In Defense of Obama’s Safe School Czar (Sort Of) – or I Was A Teenage ‘Lolito’

When I was 17 and desperate to get out of the house (and away from my parents), I wrote a crafty, fawning letter to a teacher whom I had admired from afar (a gay man 20 years my senior, who looked like a teddy bear), then sat back and waited.  It didn’t take long to get a response, a phone number, and then a meeting that I managed to turn into a date.  He thought I was very “mature” for my age.  I thought so too. 

As soon as I turned 18, I moved in with him.  (Note: he was not my first target; I had a terrible crush on my American History teacher in high school – another gay man – but he was partnered and I scared him off.)  Needless to say, we did not live happily ever after.

Married life brought out my true immaturity.  He was set in his ways, I had no discipline.  He liked dinner parties and lectures, I liked wearing silver lame’ pants to discos.  He had plenty of friends, gay and straight, some of whom he’d known since I was an infant.  They were very nice to me – but I was jealous of them all.  I threw tantrums.  “You love them more than you love me!”  (more…)

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Tags: Christianophobia, Christopher Isherwood, Cruising, Desperate Houswives, Dick Cheney
Posted Oct 9th 2009 at 5:03 am in Culture, Featured Story, Politics | 239946205 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/10/09/in-defense-of-obamas-safe-school-czar-sort-of-or-i-was-a-teenage-lolito/In+Defense+of+Obama%27s+Safe+School+Czar+%28Sort+Of%29+-+or+I+Was+A+Teenage+%27Lolito%272009-10-09+12%3A03%3A06Charles+Winecoff

The NEA: More Than Just A Little ‘Gay’

Last month, National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman said that, in American politics, ”the arts are a little bit of a target.  The subtext is that it is elitist, left wing, maybe even a little gay.”

Well, the NEA has certainly earned that reputation these past few weeks.  Just like the LGBT community, the NEA – which purports to help struggling artists of all kinds - is following in lockstep with The One, regardless of whether it’s good for artistic expression, free speech, or real people.

Last fall, I was amazed at how many folks in the gay community let themselves believe that getting Obama elected would be the magical first step towards achieving “equality” – at least in terms of appropriating the word “marriage” - despite the fact that He had already stated clearly that He is against gay marriage.

And no one seemed to care (much less recall) that, in 2007, The One had told CNN that building a consensus for gay marriage would be “difficult and distracting” – you know, like the Iraq war?  (Or gnats.) (more…)

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Tags: 'Health Care Reform, Andres Serrano, Art, Bobby Jindal, Chris Ofili
Posted Sep 22nd 2009 at 3:33 pm in Art, Politics | 22802273 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/09/22/the-nea-more-than-just-a-little-gay/The+NEA%3A+More+Than+Just+A+Little+%27Gay%272009-09-22+22%3A33%3A06Charles+Winecoff

A-holes and Insects – or Mother Nature Doesn’t Care If You’re a Good Liberal

Decades before George Clooney began using “Darfur” to swat away the unfashionable nuisance of “Iraq,” the hollow eyes and distended stomachs of starving Biafran children gave America’s impressionable “me generation” a reality check during commercial breaks.  Parents shook their heads and wrote checks.  “We have so much,” went the refrain.  “The world is so unfair.”

My pretty fourth-grade teacher, who taught us everything from math and history to a dash of entomology (study of insects), didn’t think so.  One day, unprompted, she told her class of 10-year-olds that she wasn’t really concerned about the Biafran babies because mass starvation was just nature’s way of controlling overpopulation.  (My parents were mortified.)

Margaret Sanger

Hard to fathom how, less than three decades after the Holocaust, any educated person could harbor such cold acceptance of the cruel suffering of fellow human beings - much less voice it (and to children, no less).  But whoever said the human race is on a one-way path to progress?

It’s widely assumed that, in every moment we’re alive, we’ve reached a new pinnacle – of modernity, experience, knowledge, enlightenment – that we always move forward, never back.  But what if we don’t?  What if we’re fated to make the same mistakes (disguised with innocuous new names) over and over again? (more…)

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Tags: Ahmadinejad, ants, Betty Friedan, Biafra, Census Bureau
Posted Jul 10th 2009 at 5:02 am in Featured Story, Politics, Religion | 164862210 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/07/10/a-holes-and-insects-or-mother-nature-doesnt-care-how-liberal-you-are/A-holes+and+Insects+-+or+Mother+Nature+Doesn%27t+Care+If+You%27re+a+Good+Liberal2009-07-10+12%3A02%3A16Charles+Winecoff

The Stoning Of Team Hollywood

The crime is complete. Judgment has been passed. The killing stones are in hand. As per the harsh stoning penal code of Iran’s Islamist thugocracy (for however long that lasts) where the crime took place, my stones are not so big as to kill right away, not so small you can’t call them stones. And I’m winding up like Nolan Ryan. Feel free to pick up a stone of your own. But wait for it!

And let me make this perfectly clear, even if they do say Jehovah!

Sentence must be read before being carried out. And unlike Soraya M., the board members of the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges will deserve every rock that’s thrown their way. I also believe that, in light of events in Iran today, the following commentary will stand out in much starker prominence than it did when I first started reporting on them in early March, when Team Oscar first set off for the Unfriendly Skies of Islamist Iran. (more…)

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Tags: Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences, Ahmadinejad, Al Franken, Alireza Davudnejad, Ambush Bay
Posted Jun 19th 2009 at 5:45 pm in Entertainment, News, Politics | 1641062 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/06/19/the-stoning-of-team-hollywood/The+Stoning+Of+Team+Hollywood2009-06-20+00%3A45%3A26John+T.+Simpson

On the Record, Off the QT and Not Very Hush-Hush

Dear Big Hollywood readers, it gives me great satisfaction to report to you that BH has been out on point not only on compelling film industry issues, which will never be covered in promo rags like Variety and the Hollywood Reporter (but then again, AMPAS and the studios aren’t buying us off), but on many controversial issues being played out in America and the greater world at large as well.

I know this to be true. Being a news junkie myself, I have found time after time as I was reading about a supposedly breaking subject, like ABC’s recent coverage of the targeted LGBT murders in Iraq, that it had already been on display for all to see in Big Hollywood posts for months.

Not to toot my own horn, but…well, okay, I’m tooting my own horn. And those of Andy Breitbart and John Nolte, who have given I, and so many other wonderful and insightful Hollywood right-wing fringe types, a magnificent bullhorn we otherwise would not have. We appear to be doing the dirty jobs our media just refuses to do. It’s a labor Hercules would completely sympathize with. (more…)

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Tags: abc, Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences, Adrianne Curry, Ali al-Sistani, AMPAS
Posted Jun 3rd 2009 at 5:20 pm in Entertainment, Politics | 1476823 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/06/03/on-the-record-off-the-qt-and-not-very-hush-hush/On+the+Record%2C+Off+the+QT+and+Not+Very+Hush-Hush2009-06-04+00%3A20%3A57John+T.+Simpson

Why Reagan Was a Better Friend to Gays Than Obama

I really thought my Republican platform piece here at BH would have been my last for awhile. Plenty for readers of all stripes to chew on. And I got too many other things to do. The reason for my reluctant return is yet another critical issue the Obamamedia and our LibDem government are completely flat-lining on: the officially sanctioned exterminations of LGBTs in Iraq, and on our dime. Not to mention State’s cold and lame response. More on that later. Too much more, actually.

First, the one of the main points of this fact-based opinion piece. And I know I’m going to catch hell from the Streisand and Brolin crowd on this one! Ronald Reagan was a hero to gays, and Obama has not been to date. I know, I know. The Evil Ronald Reagan, who practically invented AIDS? Reagan, the Adolf Eichmann of the Gay World? Not true. Not by a country mile!

In fact, Ronald Reagan was a better friend to gays and lesbians in his age than Barack Obama has been to gays in his. But don’t even go by what I say. I’m a right wing extremist, and very biased to what I believe. I admit it. Who isn’t these days? The press? LOL! But here are some irrefutable facts on The One and The Gipper I thought I’d throw out there. A gay buffet for thought, if you will. With swimming pools. And movie stars. (more…)

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Tags: academy award, Academy of Motion Picture arts and Sciences, al qaeda, Ali al-Sistani, AMPAS
Posted May 8th 2009 at 6:39 am in Politics | 12720213 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/jtsimpson/2009/05/08/why-reagan-was-a-better-friend-to-gays-than-obama/Why+Reagan+Was+a+Better+Friend+to+Gays+Than+Obama2009-05-08+13%3A39%3A47John+T.+Simpson

Love, War – and Gay Marriage

Late last year, when the gay community was working itself into a frenzy over the passage of Proposition 8 -the measure to amend the California State Constitution to define marriage specifically as a union between one man and one woman – I realized I didn’t trust the community anymore.  And I’m gay. 

The realization didn’t come overnight; it had been forming for some time.  But the Gestapo tactics over Prop 8 – McCarthy-style blacklists, boycotting of otherwise gay-friendly businesses, apologies coerced out of individual supporters who made the “wrong” choice, enforced politically-correct donations to the Human Rights Campaign - clarified it for me.

I hadn’t left the community, it had left me.  When did the gays get so mean, anyway? 

Well, isn’t it “mean” for California voters to deny us our basic civil rights?  I can hear the retort.  And I understand the anger, believe me, to a degree.  Feelings have been hurt.  I also agree that changing any Constitution over this issue is a bad idea. (more…)

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Tags: 9/11, Al Pacino, Anita Bryant, Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood
Posted Mar 19th 2009 at 5:05 am in Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics | 76946129 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/cwinecoff/2009/03/19/love-war-and-gay-marriage/Love%2C+War+-+and+Gay+Marriage2009-03-19+12%3A05%3A05Charles+Winecoff

A View From Stage Right; Part 2

Part 1 of what I half-jokingly called my “Manifesto.”

In a fiscal conservative’s utopian dreamworld, there would be no federal funding for the arts (or so many other government agencies or programs for that matter).  This has been our position since the inception of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in the early 1970’s.  We’ve been saying that if elected, we would abolish these misguided programs and departments and bring our government back to the bare-bones constitutionally described role that it has and leave everything else to the states.

We’ve held the influential bully pulpit of the presidency for twenty of the past twenty-eight years, and what has happened to the NEA?  It has grown.  While we have stood on principle,  we have also stood on the sidelines.  The founding fathers would be outraged that the federal government is funding art with taxpayer money, but because we are on the sidelines standing on our principles, all of that money is going to the people creating art with messages that undermine our very existence. (more…)

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Tags: "And the Band Played On", "Angels in America", abortion, AIDS, Andre Bishop
Posted Mar 4th 2009 at 5:50 pm in Entertainment, Politics | 7162661 Commentshttp://bighollywood.breitbart.com/sright/2009/03/04/a-view-from-stage-right-part-2/A+View+From+Stage+Right%3B++Part+22009-03-05+01%3A50%3A22Stage+Right