On this Martin Luther King Day, one day before the historic inauguration of the United States’ first president of color, I encourage everyone to also remember Dr. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, who died almost exactly two years ago.

Refusing to rest on her laurels, Mrs. King became an outspoken advocate of gay rights, for which she was heavily criticized by many conservative members of the African American and Christian communities.  Mrs. King, however, believed strongly that it was a distortion of her husband’s cause to celebrate him from the same pulpits and podiums which were, on other days, used to spread homophobic messages.

Here is one of my favorite quotations from Mrs. King:

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group. (Chicago Defender, 1 April 1998)

To read more about what Coretta Scott King had to say on the subject of gay rights, check out Soulforce’s excellent website.

So, as you know, bigots around the country were more than happy to contribute their money and time to help pass Proposition Hate in California (banning gay marriage)–which, I might add, even after all of those resources, still only passed by a margin of 1%.

It turns out that, in California, the name and address of anyone who contributes more than $100 to a campaign is public record.  Well, some homos had the brilliant idea to publish this information on Google maps so that everyone could know which of their friends, neighbors and local businessmen were in fact backstabbing fuckfaces.  You know, the kind who say things like, “I’m not homophobic, I just think marriage should be between a man and a woman.”

Well, guess what, princess:  Yes, you ARE homophobic.  And now, we know who you are.

But here’s the best part.  Now these fuckfaces have filed to have the public record of Prop. Hate supporters suppressed because they claim a) it diminishes their right to free speech and b) they are experiencing harassment and discrimination.

Well, doesn’t THAT fucking take the cake.  I thought that the gays were experiencing harassment and discrimination because WE ARE DENIED THE SAME LEGAL RIGHTS AS EVERYONE ELSE.  But I guess I got it all wrong.  The bigots really have it hard.  Boo hoo.

Furthermore, while the Constitution does guarantee the right to free speech–free speech does not mean free of consequences.

To conclude, please send lions.  We have an idiot problem.

Marriage Ban Donors Feel Exposed by List - NYTimes.com.

Incoming Press Secretary Gibbs has announced that Obama will overturn Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, allowing gays to serve openly in the military.  Now, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think one of the BEST things about being gay is not having to worry about being in the military, so I have seriously mixed feelings about this.

More to the point:  Two months ago, I would have never dreamed I’d be accusing Obama of stoking the culture wars to distract from more important things.  And yet, here we are, and I’m…. concerned.  If this is really about gay rights, then great, I guess (although I can think of a bunch of gay rights much higher on my list of priorities).  But, you know, beggers can’t be choosers.  On the other hand, if this is just another case of trotting out the gays to take the heat off the hard shit–then that’s lame, Mr. Obama.  Very lame.

FOXNews.com - Obama to End Military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Policy

Talk about timing!  This week, at long last, Noah and Luke–everyone’s favorite daytime gays from As The World Turns–finally, after almost two years of “waiting for the right time,” finally got their shit together and bumped uglies.

Or, I mean, I guess they did….

As I concluded in my previous post on As The Anus Turns, mainstream America insists that all gay love take place off-screen.  So what we actually see is some kissing, removing of shirts, and then…. cut to commercial!  The next thing we know, the boys are emerging, post coitus, from the bathroom.

To be honest, after waiting this long, I’m not even entirely convinced that Noah and Luke KNOW what to do.  The show basically portrays them as Ken dolls–handsome, impeccably coifed, plasticine, full of romantic feelings, but functionally castrated.

On the one hand, I give As The Anus Turns credit for portraying young gay male characters in a way which does not pathologize their emotional lives.  Nonetheless, I think that Noah and Luke are in many ways disturbingly Victorian:  The extent to which they are full of “fine sentiments” serves to sanitize and disguise the fact that gay sexuality is a sexuality.  By making gay sex something from which the viewer’s gaze must be averted, it implies that this perfectly healthy (and, in Noah’s and Luke’s case, loving) act is shameful.

So call me medieval, but until I see the bloodied sheet, I will not be convinced that they didn’t just play with each other’s hair.

Oh, and speaking of hair, the post-coital scene highlights two gay superpowers: Namely, the ability to shower while wearing pants; and second, the ability to emerge from a shower fully blow-dried.

Observe:

While having dessert in an undisclosed location called Pizzeria Uno, we spotted these absurdly phallic wall-mounted lamps.  Heh heh.  I just said wall-mounted….

Wait, where was I?  Oh yes….

My, what a firm grip you have there!  But we all know that sometimes, you need both hands….

Ooooh, baby, I love it when you grab the base while tickling the tip.  Sky rockets in flight!

….and, we have liftoff.

Just in case the point wasn’t clear enough, evangelical bear cub Mary Driscoll should be aware than it isn’t just straight people who can have 2 become 1.  Gays are perfectly capable of having 2 become 1, or 3 become 1, or 4 become one, or…. well, you get the idea.  In case you have a limited imagination, here are just a few of the most basic “merging” techniques, charmingly illustrated by dirty mannequins!

After seeing Labia’s post, I couldn’t help but respond with this.  Evangelical bear cub Mary Driscoll’s biblical theology is so incredibly shady, and I can post about that on another occasion is anyone is interested.  But in the meantime, it occurred to me that, oh, ’round about 1996, when Mary was still just evangelical otter Driscoll, it seems this song must have somehow gotten scrambled up with his Bible passages.  Must have been all the E and rough living….

So, there are two possibilities:  Either it turns out that the Spice Girls were secretly brilliant theologians; OR–you just ain’t as deep as you think you is, baby.  If your theology of marriage and sexuality can be summed up by a mid-nineties Spice Girls song, there’s a problem, m’kay?

Oh my God!  So I was just watching Underworld on TNT (don’t hate!), and I saw this commercial by the National Ad Council promoting the website fatherhood.gov.  It shows an obviously gay African American father helping his young daughter to practice her cheerleading moves.  I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop–but then the end card flashed and I realized that the commercial was actually offering this as a positive portrayal of fatherhood.

How the times do change.  I think we should all write to the Ad Council thanking them for such a cool commercial.  Anyway, check it out!

OK, I am waaaaay behind the times, so many of you lieblings probably already know about the gay teen character, Luke, who featured prominently on As The World Turns around about 2007.  If I’m slow on the uptake, I promise it is NOT because I live in a closet (so to speak), but rather because I don’t have a lot of time to catch up on the daytime sterrrries.  When I were a baby gay on my grandma’s knee, we used to watch General Hospital together–but let me tell you, General Hospital never had nothin’ like this, m’kay!

For those of you who are new to all of this, here’s a recap of the storyline, which in its brevity may accentuate some of the absurdities of the soap opera plot twists–but in truth, it’s all pretty seriously improbable even as it unfolds in real time.

Luke is a gay teen with a penchant for falling in love with straight guys (and don’t we all know how THAT feels).  Along comes Noah, whom he meets while they’re interning on a local access TV show they’re making called Invisible Woman.  Noah is dating Luke’s best friend Maddie (a girl).  Luke, predictably, falls for straight Noah but then they develop kind of a bromance and it becomes obvious that straight Noah is not, in fact, straight.  This is made more complicated by the presence of Noah’s disapproving Army father, who has never been more delighted to discover that his obviously-faggot son has a girlfriend, Maddie.  Meanwhile, there’s some behind-the-scenes office romance and Noah kisses Luke, then pretends that he did it as a joke, then admits that it wasn’t a joke, then says it doesn’t matter because he’s moving in with Maddie and he’s going to become the son his father always wanted.  Maddie gets wind of these shenanigans, confronts Noah, Noah admits that he likes Luke, Maddie dumps him, after a lot of sturm-und-drang he makes his way back to Luke, and finally comes out to his bigot Army father, who pretends to be OK with it, but is actually just psychotic and devious.  You see, he lied to his son when he was only 3 and told him that his mother was dead, but in fact his mother wasn’t dead but his father didn’t like her anymore, which drove her into prostitution, but apparently this still wasn’t enough to ensure that she stayed away from Noah, so while Noah and Luke were getting their panties in a twist, Noah’s father shoots Noah’s ex-prostitute mother and then also shoots Dusty, an ex-con who is also secretly Luke’s mother’s lover with the plan of framing him for the murder.  Then, Noah’s father, the Colonel, pretends to be OK with his son being gay so that he can lure Luke into the woods on a fishing trip and shoot him.  But luckily Dusty is one tough S.O.B. and manages to drag his shot ass out to Luke’s house at which time he warns Luke’s mother that the Colonel is one crazy ass motherfucker.  Everyone except Dusty dashes out into the woods and a skirmish ensues, but unfortunately the Colonel is a mean shot even in a tussle and caps Luke, who doesn’t die but is paralyzed from the waist down.

Did you get all that?

Afterwards, Noah feels serious guilty and won’t even go to the hospital to see Luke because he thinks Luke will hate him but as it turns out, THEIR GAY LOVE IS THE ONLY FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE POWERFUL ENOUGH TO RESTORE LUKE’S LEGS AND NETHER REGIONS TO PROPER WORKING ORDER!!!!!!!

Yes, Lord.

Check out the following clip in which the power of Noah’s and Luke’s gay love confronts Noah’s evil bigot colonel father and results in the spontaneous and miraculous healing of Luke’s nether regions (of yeah, and his legs, too):

Now, this is some seriously wholesome stuff, folks.  I have never seen horny teens so apparently uninterested in macking on each other–the libido-cooling power of nether regions paralysis aside.  Everyone dresses in American Eagle (OK, so it’s not only wholesome, it’s middle America), and the boyos kiss about four times total.  When their romance first begins, Luke and Noah actually get off a few lusty kisses on-screen, but as their story progresses, the camera always manages to pan away before anything happens–which makes me wonder if As The World Turns was forced to back off the sexiness because of network feedback or pressure from advertisers.  Compare, for example, the differences in these two scenes.  The first is their first kiss; the second is the sweet Christmas episode during which Luke reveals that Noah’s gay love has healed his nether regions and legs and Noah writes Luke a card in which he says he loves him–then they presumably kiss under the mistletoe but all we get to see is a pan-up and fadeout.

Now granted, As The World Turns has presented a compelling coming out story which, in its details, will be recognizable to most of us: a psychotic father who attempts to murder our lover on an evil fishing expedition; an ex-con substitute father figure who, after surviving a gunshot wound inflicted by our real father, begrudgingly encourages us to be supportive of our paralyzed “friend”; and a prostitute mother, also murdered by our real father, who sends letters from the grave encouraging us, better late than never, to accept ourselves for who we truly are.  I think we’ve all been through this, and so its good to see daytime television telling our real stories so that people can see we’re just like them.

On the other hand, why is it still the case that all of our gay love has to take place off-screen?  Murder, mayhem, adultery, incest, shoulder pads, insane perms–sure, bring them on.  Two boys gettin’ some booty?  It’d be the end of civilization as we know it!