Posts Tagged ‘proposition 8’

Charles Winecoff

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

by Charles Winecoff

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…)

Steven Crowder

Getting Louder With Steven Crowder: Hamas, Prop. 8 and Sarah Palin

by Steven Crowder

As a follow up to my “GO TEAM ISRAEL” video, I dissect the moronic arguments commonly made by young Liberals involved with the “Pro-Palestinian” aka  “Pro-Hell-bent-on-the-destruction-of-Israel-Hamas-bastards” movement.  If the arguments addressed seem too paper thin to even give credence…  Trust me, I’m right there with you.  However, someone has to pestle these points into their astonishingly hard noggins… And I’m just the man to do it.


The unfairly attractive “Sarah Palin” is covered.  I also touch upon what are commonly referred to as “liberal elitists” and their gay marriage antics.  Oh leftists… What will they do next?

Stage Right

Prop 8: I’m Spartacus! No, I’m Scott Eckern!

by Stage Right

That’s what I felt like yelling during last November’s horrifying public shaming of a theatre executive in California.  Scott Eckern, the Artistic Director of Sacramento Music Theatre, was forced to resign after the public revelation that he donated $1,000 to the Prop. 8 campaign.  I felt like calling all of my friends in the theatre industry and saying “I’M SCOTT ECKERN!”  I felt like responding to all of the e-mails I received from my colleagues urging me to join the drive to remove him from his post by saying:  “I’M SCOTT ECKERN!”  “If you take him, you should take me! ” Like all those slaves standing in solidarity with Spartacus.  I was also an executive in the industry with similar views.  There but for the grace of God….

But I didn’t stand up and shout.  I didn’t because I am a coward.  I didn’t because I have children and a mortgage and I might need the next job that comes along so I keep my mouth shut.

But make no mistake, there are many of us working in the theatre industry and the spectacle that was Scott Eckern’s ouster was terrifying and enraging to us.  Many readers of Big Hollywood suggest that as long as we are effective in our jobs and we “put butts in seats” then we should have the courage to speak out and fight for our beliefs even if we are a minority in a hostile environment….  I hope this morality tale speaks to you…

I was fortunate enough to witness this witch-hunt from inside the Facebook bubble that helped create it.  You see, one of my friends, actress Susan Egan, circulated an open letter to all of her friends.  And then her friends circulated it to their friends and well, by now you know what happened.  Her letter has been reported many times and she seems proud of her involvement in this episode.  She actually wrote her initial letter and then, within 24 hours wrote a follow-up.  The full text of Susan Egan’s original letter can be found here.   Her follow-up letter is harder to come by, but it contains much more revealing information.  In the spirit of “full context” I include the entire second letter here:  (my comments follow below)

(more…)