No matter who you ask, this country is going to hell in a handbasket. And one of the main reasons people is gay marriage.
If you ask religious conservatives, the prevalence of gay magazines, television shows, movies and the like represents the appalling acceptance of an unholy lifestyle, one that has been forced upon them through the filter of popular culture. If you ask everyone else, owning all three branches of government is no reason to feel disenfranchised.
And if you ask me, Will and Grace does not a movement make, but then again, nobody ever asked me.
It seems to me that even those who are the most tolerant of homosexuality have a long way to go. Consider Hollywood. Last Friday, the movie Alexander, starring Irish heartthrob Colin Farrell, was supposed to be unleashed upon the masses (in preparation, the History Channel has slipped an hour or so of Greek history in between The Weapons of World War II and The Men Who Fired The Weapons of World War II).
Give Oliver Stone credit -- at least he is acknowledging that his movie's protagonist had homosexual leanings (we'll skip the whole bit about how it wasn't necessarily homosexual because the ancient Greeks didn't share our black-and-white concept of sexuality). Unfortunately, the gay love scenes were deemed "too steamy" at the last minute. According to an anonymous insider quoted by MSNBC, "Some of the suits at Warner Bros. think that the movie-going public just isn't ready to see that. There are some pretty heated arguments going on over it." Therefore, the release date has been pushed back to Nov. 24 while the studio edits them out.
Now who says Hollywood doesn't share "our" values?
Troy, which starred Brad Pitt's buttocks as the Greek hero Achilles, also glossed over any potential gayness (at least, in terms of the plot). In the movie, Achilles sulks in his tent until the death of his "cousin" Patroclus, at which point he seeks revenge. This does, of course, rewrite their original relationship (I'll give you a hint: They weren't cousins).
I can see next summer's blockbuster now. Liberace: A Straight Man's Musical Odyssey.
It's probably true that the decisions made by these studios were based on whether their target audience would be turned off by the scenes, as opposed to some overriding ideology. Maybe they imagined throngs of heartbroken teenagers standing outside multiplexes nationwide, waiting for their parents to pick them up and thinking, "Dude, Alexander was so gay." There go the DVD sales.
But the younger demographic, by many accounts, is the most tolerant of any when it comes to homosexuality. According to data taken from the General Social Survey, this tolerance has been increasing for several decades. So then why did the studio behave the way it did?
I think it isn't necessarily homosexuality that the studio execs were concerned might drive away viewers. I think it was the idea of a gay alpha male. We've gotten to the point as a society where we can pretty much deal with gays, as long as they follow the rules: Dress fashionably, sing show tunes and work as hair stylists. It's when we see them conquering the known world that we get a little uncomfortable.
By taking this stance, I am no doubt inviting all sorts of questions about my own sexuality (straight as 6 o'clock, I assure you. Not that there's anything wrong with not being straight. But I am. Straight). I am not demanding that Warner Bros. show me extended sequences of Colin Farrell in the buff. I just think it's sad that we look to certain citizens and say: You can be here, and be queer, as long as your queerness falls within our previously defined conceptions of what that means.
This is all coming to a head, of course, because (get this) now gay people want the right to get married. For what it's worth (not much in my opinion) journalists have seized upon a post-election narrative where, because of the threat gay marriage poses to our national defense, evangelicals voted in droves, propelling Bush to victory.
I find this odd, since I don't think the Religious Right hates gay people. They love them, as they love all God's children. And like everyone else, they believe gay people should remain abstinent before marriage. Of course, they also believe gays shouldn't get married, which does present a bit of a bind. But I'm sure it's predicated on love and understanding.
I believe that the struggle for gay rights will be one that defines our generation, as the Civil Rights Movement (among other things) defined the '60s. I'm not going to get into the debate over who has been more maligned historically. But discriminating against people on the basis of their sexual preference is as arbitrary and immoral as discriminating on the basis of the color of their skin.
If you fall on my side of this struggle, you took a hit with the re-election of George W. Bush. But it doesn't mean you give up and move to Canada. Marriage is only part of the battle for equality, one that will not be complete until we recognize that, as Alexander the Great shows us, gay people can kill and maim with the best of us straight guys.
Some days, it feels like we have a long way to go.
Eliot Sherman is a senior English major from Philadelphia and editorial page editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. Diary of a Madman normally appears on Thursdays.
