Michelangelo Signorile: On Balance

To me, objectivity is less important than being fair and striving to be fair. I always make sure to show the opposing view, and present it fairly, even if it's clear what my view is. But [on homosexuality] the opposing view is now completely debunked when it comes to a scientific point of view. There are no reputable scientists, medical associations, sexologists, etc., who see homosexuality, bisexuality or transgender identity as harmful -- and so all the media is left with to show an opposing view is bigotry, most often from religious conservatives. And they just do not have a place anymore - and perhaps never should have - in public policy debate. The media no longer bring white supremacists on to debate racial issues. It's time they stop bringing on anti-gay hate groups too. It's not about censorship - and I'm not saying there shouldn't be debates about our issues -- but with these particular people, simply promoting bias, the debate must be over...

From an interview with Huffington Post Gay Voices, promoting It's Not Over: Getting Beyond Tolerance, Defeating Homophobia, and Winning True Equality.

See also MS talking about 'Victory Blindness' and 'Covering'.

There's an interesting wide-ranging discussion with Tim Teeman on The Daily Beast.

For Signorile... the most fundamental hang-up in America toward homosexuality is around sex itself. 

“It’s why the guys don’t have sex on Modern Family. We’ve ‘gotten married.’ But, whether it’s Hollywood, or Washington, or the public health establishment, the one thing we cannot talk about, or show, is our sex lives,” says Signorile. “That’s the biggest sign that ‘it’s not over.’ The thing that makes us different is how and who we have sex with. It grosses people out.”

Signorile points to the thesis of Kenji Yoshino’s Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights. In Signorile’s words, Yoshino argues that “LGBTs are not being accepted if we are covering aspects of ourselves that are uncomfortable. If you’re covering things you don’t want them to see about you to help you fit in with them, it’s not real acceptance.”

That’s why, to Signorile, “Sex, probably, is the final frontier on some level.” ...

Update: Excerpt - How true are those breathless polls about public support for gay rights.

Modern Family: Not So

Eric Stonestreet has won two Emmys for his performance as Cam on ABC’s Modern Familywhile Jesse Tyler Ferguson has been nominated for each of the first five seasons as Mitchell.

But not everyone is crazy about Cam and Mitch who got married in a two-part episode at the end of last season.

One of those people is actor Tuc Watkins who played one half of a gay couple for several years on ABC’s Desperate Housewives.

Watkins, who came out publicly last year, shared his feelings about the characters in a Facebook post on Thursday: ‘Hmm. I think “Modern Family” is clever, hilarious, even terrifically subtle at times. But, for the most part, I have a hard time laughing at the gay guys. In fact, I kinda cringe. It feels a little bit like the gay equivalent of “blackface.” It doesn’t feel “modern” at all.’

‘Sure, people come in all shapes, sizes, etc. So why are we fed such 80s stereotypes every week?’

Greg In Hollywood.

PS Jesse Tyler Ferguson replies.

PPS And Tuc replies! Anyone still awake?

Modern Family: Conservative Family Values

The show is a significant one for more reasons than simply audience numbers and critical acclaim. Created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, the team behind Frasier, it’s a show that is pushing television boundaries and, in its own quiet way, changing political viewpoints. Right wing conservatives, including Mitt Romney and his wife, are said to be fans and, in a recent survey, Republicans ranked the show third in a list of their top 15 shows, while Democrats didn’t rank it at all. All rather surprising, given the inclusion of a gay couple with a baby as one of the family units.

“This is probably a little overwrought, but I do actually think the writers are making the world a better place,” Burrell says earnestly. “It’s one of my favourite things about the show. I love it when I talk to conservatives and they’re describing all three couples, and they never mention that one of them is gay. That’s the brilliance of the writing. In a completely unaggressive, apolitical way, they are showing this couple as completely normal dealing with ordinary stuff. The banality of it is the most revolutionary thing.

“I think if you turned around and asked that same conservative person how they felt about gay marriage, that probably hasn’t changed for them, but the seed has been planted none the less. It’s progress and it’s the coolest thing.”

Daily Telegraph interview with Ty Burrell, who plays 'cool dad', Phil Dunphy - and won an Emmy for it last night.

Have I got this right? A TV show that stars a heteronormative gay couple - 'married with child', clearly defined 'him and her' roles - is more popular with American Conservatives than Liberals? 

You amaze me!!

PS Modern Family won its fifth consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series yesterday.

And The Normal Heart won the Emmy Award for Best Televsion Movie, somewhat predictably.

PPS Half a decade of Modern Family's upper-class fantasies, Mic.

The Guardian: Let's Have An Unheated Debate!

From the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, primetime American television audiences grew to embrace two male characters who would come to define two distinct types of gay male characters. The sensitive Will Truman and the flamboyant Jack McFarland, portrayed by actors Eric McCormack and Sean Hayes, became the backbone of the hugely popular sitcom Will & Grace. It was the first time two such characters regularly took the stage in primetime television.

In the years since, the advent of reality television (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) and the diversity of cable programming (Queer as Folk) provided more diverse representations of LGBT lifestyles. But now gay characters and personalities have moved from niche to mainstream in shows like Modern Family or HBO’s Looking. Gayness* is now less of a reason for having a character, and has instead become just another plot twist or character nuance.

But it doesn’t mean all the work is over. We’ve invited three critics to discuss the evolution of LGBT characters in pop culture – and to identify cultural blind spots where producers, writers and actors still need to put in work. Answers have been edited for length...

The Guardian.

By golly, this is dull - and that's even if you ignore the inane witterings of the spectacularly thick Nancy Goldstein.

PS The premise for this is shamelessly nicked off this rather good article by Nico Lang. Though they seem to have totally misunderstood his points.

* 'Gayness'???!! What is this 'gayness' of which you speak?

The Tablet: Modern Family

Fagburn's favourite international Catholic news weekly! 

DOMA: Huzzah For Hollywood!

Not long after the Supreme Court ruled in support of gay marriage Wednesday, Ellen DeGeneres tweeted a simple congratulations to "everyone. And I mean everyone." But she could have added: in Hollywood.
For while the landmark decision may have thrilled gay rights activists and vexed opponents of gay marriage, the news otherwise didn't have the thunderclap moment of court cases such as Brown v. Board of Education or Roe v. Wade.
Why? The nation's pop culture machine has for decades now chipped away at a once taboo topic so as to render it utterly familiar. Whether it's the antics of two gay men in the hit ABC comedy Modern Family or the brazen but heartfelt sexuality on display in HBO's Behind the Candelabra, same-sex unions seem – at least on screen and on stage – to be an entrenched part of our federal union...

USA Today.

Can freedom be won by sitting round watching television?
They quote Harvey Fierstein; "The psychology of television is that it's in your house, you're in your underwear. It's very intimate. So the exposure of gay people – no matter what they are – it shows them as the norm, as a normal part of life. All of those things really do add up."
They're also whooping it up over on E! Online with Gay Marriage: A Look At Same-Sex Loving Characters In Movies.
"Looking for a way to celebrate the end of DOMA? How about a movie night?"
We're here! We're same-sex loving! And we're going to the multiplex!

In a second feature E! has a better idea; "What better way to celebrate the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act than with a gay TV wedding? With lots of them!
"In honor of this historic day, we pulled together a list of gay TV couples whose weddings we want to see (and attend!) come the fall season, so break out your formalwear and start dusting off your dancing shoes, 'cause we're heading to the chapel..."
Front runners are - go on, guess - Kurt and Blaine from Glee (remember when that was a "thing"?), and Mitch and Cam from Modern Family.
Hollywood Reporter reports that series co-creator, Christopher Lloyd, thinks post-DOMA Mitch and Cam getting hitched is "a real possibility".
I guess gushing features like these do support Fierstein's thesis of popular cultural normalisation, merely by being run on the big US meeja with barely a squeak.
At least Queerty's Hollywood's Gay Marriage Conspiracy: It Worked! went through all this - again - with a sense of irony and perspective.

Gay Money: A Poverty Of Riches

When gays and lesbians are featured in popular culture, what do we see? White, wealthy women who host talk shows or affluent men doting on their kids -- like Mitchell and Cameron from "Modern Family." So it’s no wonder that the conventional wisdom is that gay people in America have tons of money and fewer economic struggles than the rest of the population.
But the truth is significantly different.“I think people are surprised there are any poor gay people,” says M.V. Lee Badgett, professor of economics and research director for The Williams Institute, a national think tank at UCLA Law School researches sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy. “This ‘myth of gay affluence’ has been around for a long time. It gets in the way of people even imagining that LGBT people can be poor.”
On Monday, the Williams Institute will release a detailed study about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and their real economic status. Drawing on recent data from four different sources, the report finds a sexual orientation “poverty gap”: LGBT Americans are more likely to be poor than heterosexuals, with African-Americans and women particularly vulnerable.
Badgett spoke with NBC News about the results of the study, "The Gay Affluence Myth: New Research on LGBT Poverty."

NBC News.
The article includes an interview with Badgett on The Gay Affluence Myth.
Though with all the work done on debunking this myth - see Gay Money: The truth about lesbian and gay economics - it's depressing this would still be news to anyone.
And surely the main propagators of the gay=rich myth have been, not popular culture, but the US evangelical right, and the gay media* and gay marketeers? 

* For one ludicrous recent example see 8 Ways Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Is Good For The Economy on Huff Post Gay.
Includes the classic correction: "An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that legalizing same-sex marriage would boost California's economy by $123 billion over three years. It would boost it by $123 million, according to a 2005 Stanford study."
The second figure's just as spurious, but Oops!

Invisible Parents: This Isn't Just Any Family...

A "viral video" promoting legal recognition of gay parenting and adoption rights in the EU.
Good for them for doing this, lots of folk love this sort of heartstring plucking, and I don't think it's aimed at people like me.
I kept expecting the voiceover to say; "This isn't just any family... this is an M&S gay family", and thought it was as sentimental and mawkish as a John Lewis Christmas ad.

Also interesting that the two dads' child is a girl.
This invariably seems to be the case in representations of gay male parents in popular culture - from Jenny Lives With Eric And Martin to Modern Family.
Why not a boy? Is that a bit "suspect" and "icky"? Were they worried it might send out the wrong viral message?
Cause you know what they say about gay men, right?
Surely gay men who raise boys are the real "invisible parents"?

• Gay couples can legally adopt in Argentina, Belgium*, Brazil, Canada, Denmark*, Iceland, The Netherlands*, Norway, Portugal*, South Africa, Spain*, Sweden*, and The UK* (France* has just introduced a bill to legalise gay marriage and adoption).

* EU member states - 7 out of 27.

Television: Making Gay The New Normal?

Shows with gay characters, like Glee, Modern Family, and The New Normal, are helping drive voters to historically unprecedented support of gay marriage, an Oct. 29 THR poll conducted in conjunction with partner Penn Schoen Berland has found. Though gay TV also makes some voters more intensely opposed to gay marriage, they are outnumbered by voters who become more supportive of gay marriage, influenced by what they see on TV...
In the past 10 years, the THR poll of likely voters across the nation found, about three times as many voters have become more pro-gay marriage as have become more anti-gay marriage -- 31 percent pro, 10 percent anti.
Asked about how the shows influenced them, 27 percent said gay TV made them more pro-gay marriage, and six percent more anti. Obama voters watched and 30 percent got more supportive, 2 percent less supportive. Surprisingly, the shows made almost as many Romney voters more in favor of gay marriage: 13 percent got more pro-gay-marriage, 12 percent got more anti. (This trend toward gay acceptance squares with other polls: the 2011 Gallup poll was the first ever to show a majority, 53 percent, in favor of legalizing gay marriage...)
Obama voters are twice as likely to watch Modern Family as Romney voters are, twice as likely to watch Glee, and three times more likely to watch The New Normal...  *

Hollywood Reporter.

Interesting, but reductive as it implies television is the main driver behind changes in social attitudes.
Turn tellybox on, watch tellybox, mind changed, problem solved...
Of course popular culture matters - I don't think I'd bother writing about it if I didn't think it did. 
But what happens in the cultural, political and social spheres all interact and overlap, and it's surely the latter - our interactions with real people - that has really transformed our world.
Mind you, what kind of a freak wants to be "normal"?

• So maybe Catholic Online et al are onto something with their 'Fightback against gay TV in your home'?

* This contradicts the oft-quoted line that Republicans are more likely to watch Modern Family. Thus scientifically proving that at least 50% of surveys about The Gays must be bollocks. 

US TV Sitcoms: Are We Family?

In terms of change, one of the most startling developments is the growth in the number of sitcom gay characters and their acceptability to the viewing public.

Modern Family is a mega-hit comedy that features three families - a white couple with 2.4 kids, an interracial marriage between a white man and a Hispanic woman, and a gay couple who are raising an adopted daughter.

The show isn't about politically correct cliches. In one episode, the gay couple - Cameron and Mitchell - want to get their toddler into a popular school. Worried that their sexuality isn't enough to win over the ultra-liberal headmaster, Cameron pretends to be a Native American. His improvised "injun" accent is met with a stony silence and the daughter doesn't get her place.
Given that it explores race and sexuality with such frankness, we might expect Modern Family to be something that mostly Democrats watch. In fact, both Obama and Romney have cited it as their favourite show and Republicans in general are more likely to watch it than Democrats... 

Tim Stanley writing on BBC Online. 

Or, alternatively, you could argue that gay characters are more acceptable in sitcoms than elsewhere in TVland because the audience can laugh at them...

• Tim Stanley presents Family Guys? What Sitcoms Say About American Now on BBC2 tonight.

2011: A Very Good Year?

The festive silly season is upon us.
When newspapers give up on news and that and start padding out their pages with retrospectives, Reviews of The Year/s, and endless Best Of lists.
Funny, it seems to start earlier every year, doesn't it?
The Observer is first out of the mixed metaphors.
"2011", it notes sagely, was, "A good year to be gay."
Further, it's been "extraordinary".
The piece is an interesting overview written by Aaron Hicklin, editor-in-chief of Out magazine.
Though Scottish born-and-bred, Hicklin now abides Stateside and writes accordingly, so it's hard to know quite why The Observer thought this was the most relevant way of looking at the world of gay for its readers.
The Tea Party, Don't Ask Don't Tell, marriage equality in New York, President Obama, Glee, Modern Family, Neil Patrick Harris...
No island is an island, of course, so tidal waves in the US can cause ripples on the shores of the UK, but why didn't the Observer get Aaron or someone to look - specifically - at what has happened over here?
Most oddly of all a sub-editor has condensed his schtick to; "Here, Aaron Hicklin, editor-in-chief of Out magazine, looks forward to the end of gay culture..."
He doesn't - surely the article contests the gay-identity deathwish of right-wing anti-gay, gay commentators like Andrew Sullivan?
Extraordinary.

Word Of The Month: Codaddies

Hey! I just read this word in an American syndicated column by Cindy Adams, A Nation Of Tolerant Fatties.
"America is becoming more tolerant. Accommodating gay marriage. Fine with codaddies raising babies. Adjusting to two nonbiological mommies having children. Getting used to pregnant high school teens who flunk math but get A+ in biology..."
I thought what a great word for the gay (media) mania of the year, but despite all the babble about Gay Dads I couldn't recall having heard it before.
After a quick look on Google exhaustive research it looks like its a neologism.
A brand spanking new word!
Straight from the fridge, codaddy!
I think.
Sean Hayes - you remember, Jack from off of Will & Grace - is rumoured to be close to signing up to a new US TV comedy about codaddies, incidentally.
We live in strange and mysterious times.
Pass it on...

US TV Networks: Still Making Us Mad As Hell?

GLAAD Network Responsibility Index 2010 - 2011
Blurb! "The fifth annual GLAAD Network Responsibility Index is an evaluation of the quantity, quality and diversity of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television. It is intended to serve as a road map toward increasing fair, accurate and inclusive LGBT media representations.
"Primetime programming on the five broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox and NBC) was evaluated as well as 10 highly-rated cable networks (A&E, ABC Family, AMC, FX, HBO, Showtime, Syfy, TBS, TNT and USA). Based on the analysis, a grade was assigned to each network: Excellent, Good, Adequate, or Failing..."

In fine: Most "gay" representation on the American tellybox is of white gay men.
There aren't many lesbians, bisexuals or people of colour.
Trans people are almost invisible - 1% of all LGBT representation.
The bestest cable network is ABC Family - whatever that it is.
Oh, apparently it's a Disney (owned) channel, and they show teen shows like GREEK and Huge.
No. Me neither.
Big sister channel ABC make Ugly Betty, Modern Family and Desperate Housewives - they are "Good".
The CW (WTF?) was the best broadcast (terrestial) channel.
These ratings can be a wonky; CW scored extremely highly for gay man hours on TV, but "51 of the CW's 55 hours of LGBT content came from... America's Next Top Model".
GLAAD think "True Blood [is] the most inclusive show on television".
It's on HBO - HBO is rated merely "Good", which surprised me.
And at last there's some good news for Rupert Murdoch, Fox was rated the second best broadcast network.
GLAAD love teh Glee.

Read the report here.

Gay Parenting: It's The New Gay Marriage!

Simply everybody's talking about gay parents!
And everybody's cooing over them and their babies - bless.
It seems slightly strange after all the parliamentary rows over gay adoption, and lesbians and IVF treatment.
Maybe no-one actually thinks it's a bad thing apart from a few right-wing religious nutcases?
There's those lovely lesbian moms, Nic and Jules, in The Kids Are All Right.
There's gay dads Cameron and Mitchell with little baby Lily in the hilarious Modern Family - they're even funnier than the Drewitt-Barlows.
And Latino newly minted homogay, Ricky Martin, has just told Oprah Winfrey he came out in March for his twins, Matteo and Valentino.
"I couldn't take it any more. It was too painful," he told the billionaire media magnate and student of bees.
"I guess the most important thing is my children. When I was holding them in my arms I was like 'What? Am I going to teach them how to lie?'
"That was my blessing right there. Then, when I was holding my children, I said: 'Okay, it's time to tell the world'."
Blub!