I love both Andrew Sullivan and Dan Savage. In a recent event sponsored by the New York Public Library, the two got together for a long conversation about a broad range of topics. As ever, both were captivating and insightful. Spend some time watching this; you’ll be glad you did.
Andrew and Dan go to the Library
Supreme Court Rulings Loom On Affirmative Action, Gay Marriage, Voting Rights.
SCOTUS – Image: Wikimedia Commons
The gay media world is all a-twitter over when the DOMA and Prop. 8 rulings are going to be handed down. There’s not a lot of time left, either. One suspects that the Supremes are going to issue these opinions on the very last day of the term — which will be June 27 — and run for the door until the first Monday until October because, I don’t know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a timeshare in the Berkshires?
Freddie Smith
Daytime Emmy Q&A: Freddie Smith.
I’m very happy with the way things are going. Everything Sonny wants, he gets, even though there’s all this drama. He’s a cool character. He’s just so smart and always has a level head. He’s always the man. But he’s been such a poster child [that] I’m just waiting. I know there will be a time where he unravels. That’s going to be fun to play and see how he deals with it. You don’t want that stuff to happen in your real life, but on TV, it’s cool to play a spiraling character. It’s fun to get those emotions out — get angry and upset and say things you’ll regret. That drama is what soaps are about, and as soon as they yell cut, you can go back to your happy self.
Nice interview with Days of our Lives’ Freddie Smith, who plays good guy Sonny Kiriakis. He and his on-screen love interest, Chandler Massey, are competing against one another in the Outstanding Younger Actor category. The Daytime Emmys will be presented tomorrow, June 16.
Bradley Taylor and Dylan Meehan, voted their high school’s cutest couple. This montage courtesy the “Have a Gay Day” Facebook group.
Carmel High School students Bradley Taylor and Dylan Meehan hold hands as they discuss the whirlwind of publicity they have received these past few days.
Just hours away from their senior prom Monday, Taylor and Meehan donned tuxedos with coordinating blue and silver vests and ties, living up to their newfound class designation. Last week, the two were named “cutest couple” in their yearbook’s senior superlatives, sparking international attention for the gay teens.
via Carmel H.S. ‘cutest couple’ become Internet sensation | The Journal News | LoHud.com | lohud.com.
I love the idea that these kids don’t see anything abnormal about a same sex couple being voted “Cutest Couple” in their senior superlatives. I, on the other hand, find it breathtaking and utterly astounding. And also as evidence that these young people will be more capable leaders of the world than my generation — and most assuredly more capable than the generation or two that came before me.
The great video that accompanies this story shows Dylan and Brad and their friends getting ready for their senior prom in Carmel, New York, north of New York City.
My high school prom was held in 1982. If I would have said I was attracted to a yak and wanted to bring a yak to the prom and let it crap on the dance floor, it would have caused less stir than if I said that I wanted to bring another boy. It just wasn’t done. Not only that, no one — certainly no one that I knew — ever even thought about it.
I cannot even imagine the world that these young people live in, but I am ecstatic that it exists for them. I hope it exists for everyone soon.
Remember this: no old person ever changed the world. Let’s make way for our young people; they know better than we do. That’s how change happens.
(Also, every now and then it pays to know your history. Written by John Lennon and released by The Beatles in 1967 was an anthem with the following line: All you need is love, Love. Love is all you need. Truer words were never spoken [well, sung]. Note that there’s no gender inferred or implied. Love is love, Love.)
Riverdale gay teen Kevin Keller and his boyfriend Devon draw some ire from a resident in the next issue of ‘Kevin Keller.’ Image: Archie Comics
Gay kiss in upcoming Archie Comics a poke at real controversy – LGBTQ Nation.
It’s a just quick kiss, but it’s a huge step forward for Archie Comics’ only openly gay character Kevin Keller.
The Riverdale teen finds his life turned upside down after locking lips with his boyfriend, Devon, in Pop Tate’s diner, drawing the ire of at least one disapproving Riverdale mom.
Remember when Archie and Jughead and company were beyond lame? Who knew that now Riverdale is on the cutting edge! Keep it up, Archie!
NBC’s “The New Normal,” a gaycentric series the network chose not to renew.
Although most people associate the month of May with the Kentucky Derby, Memorial Day weekend traffic or beautiful spring bouquets for Mom, television has only one thing on its mind: Out with the old and in with the new. Manhattan is awash with TV folks in town for the upfronts, the annual ritual in which the networks present their fall schedules to advertisers in hopes of wooing big bucks. It is too early to tell which network will be the big winner, but this year there is a clear loser: gay characters.
via Derek Hartley: May-day! TV’s Big Gay Bloodbath. Huffington Post
Will Horton (Chandler Massey) and Sonny Kiriakis (Freddie Smith) on “Days of our Lives,” one of the few gay couples on American television.
Sadly, Hartley tells it for the truth, but I’m not sure he actually goes far enough in his hue and cry against the broadcast networks.
Last year there was a lot of positive buzz about the numbers of gay characters on the networks. The sum total of gay characters was about 6% of all characters — lame — but it was the highest percentage ever. After wiping us off the map for all intents and purposes in primetime, in daytime it’s not much better. There seems only to be Sonny and Will’s front burner storyline on “Days of our Lives,” amongst the sordid lives being lived on the few remaining televised soaps. Other than that, gay characters on traditional American television are few and far between. (Eden Reigel’s Bianca stands alone — as a proud but lonely lesbian in the gay landscape of Pine Valley on the Web reboot of “All My Children.” It will be nice if that changes.)
Van Hansis, Kit Williamson and John Halbach star in the superlative Web series “EastSiders,” created by Williamson and now available on logotv.com.
Moving away from traditional TV to find entertainment, I would encourage you to check out these great Web series: EastSiders, The Outs, Husbands, and others. If you go to Logo to check out EastSiders (highly recommended), explore some of their other Web only offerings, such as Hunting Season.
“The NBC executives get a lot of critique from the press but they should be applauded for putting us on the air in the first place, because we still have a long way to go with equality in this country and around the world.”
via ‘The New Normal’ Star Justin Bartha Talks About The Show’s Cancellation.
I’ll agree with that. Good show. Good actor. Sad it’s gone. I certainly wish NBC had more balls.
Members of the media have long been the biggest deterrent to gay athletes coming out. Attitudes in the NFL shifted years ago, and even where they haven’t, players will accept a productive gay teammate whether they realize it or not.
Yet the mainstream media continues to pound the drum of NFL intolerance. A common theme I heard from “experts” in the last two weeks mentioned how Jason Collins’ coming out was lovely, but we all know how hard it really will be for an out NFL player in the locker room. On this issue, the mainstream media has showed a dereliction of duty for a decade. This is simply the latest example.
Yes, Cyd. Absolutely right.
via Cyd Zeigler: Chris Kluwe and Brendon Ayanbadejo Were Not Cut for LGBT Activism.
Kit Williamson: Logo Online and the Web Series Renaissance.
A few weeks ago, The Huffington Post announced that my independently produced web series “EastSiders” had been acquired by Logo to air on their website logotv.com. When we put the first two episodes on youtube in December I had no idea that the series would attract the kind of attention it did– being featured by the likes of USA Today, The Advocate, Out, Film Independent, Towleroad, After Elton, Queerty and of course right here on Gay Voices– much less the attention of a company like Viacom, which owns MTV and VH1 as well as Logo.
Kit Williamson and Van Hansis star as Cal and Thom in the Web series “Eastsiders.” Watch at http://www.logotv.com.
I only have one quibble with Kit Williamson’s excellent essay and that’s his use of and the headline writer’s pick of the world “renaissance.”
(My editor’s hat gets in the way sometimes. Editing professionally for years means I come with certain tics and strange opinions about semicolons, word choice and Oxford commas. You’ll just have to go with it.)
Renaissance implies a rebirth of something that has been before. Pick up your Roget’s (it’s a book, youngsters. Fine, use the app….) and you’ll find lots of synonyms that begin with “re” like reawakening, regeneration, renascence, renewal, resurgence, etc. Web series’ are not undergoing a renaissance, but rather they are a part of a revolution in entertainment — specifically independently controlled entertainment — that is in its nascent state.
Look back on this time period 12 or 18 months from now and you’ll see a shift. Two years from now the cultural landscape will be unrecognizable. I guarantee you that. Hell, Apple recently announced that the original iPhone — released in 2007!! — is now obsolete.
Bottom line: what Kit and his group and what others are doing in other places is quite extraordinary. They are the absolute pioneers in this new era and they will set the tone for what’s to come.
I have such admiration — and real envy, if you want to know the truth — for people in their early 30s and younger who have the technology and the chutzpah to throw their ideas out into the vast cauldron of the Internet and to see what bubbles to the surface. And to make an actual cultural impact.
I’m not really that old (I keep telling myself) but, honest to God, to think of the mind-numbing things I had to do when I was in college to get 100 people to see the creative stuff that I was working on, well, it would simply make your toes curl today!
Anyhow, I’ve been a dedicated viewer of this series since Day One and it’s deserving of a large following. I did see, recently, where someone asked that fans watch the show on the Logo site so that if “they” see the traffic someone might put it on TV. To that, I say with the wisdom of the ages (aged??) that’s skipping down the garden path to hell, my friends.
Why Rachel Maddow Is Right To Be Outraged.
Excellent piece by Saeed Jones on BuzzFeed. If you’re not familiar, the great Maddow went over the top on the air (and rightly so) criticizing Politifact for refusing to actually say that Martina Navratilova was correct — even after they checked the facts and found out she was correct — and called her response “half true.”
No one does righteous indignation as good as Maddow. This is probably because it is the province of the uber-smart and witty, which absolutely describes Maddow to a tee.
But Jones is no slouch, it seems, in that department. Here’s how he sums up:
And I have this unfortunate habit of needing to write essays when I’m angry. I sit at my computer, grating my teeth, hearing Zora Neale Hurston say over and over again, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
Supposedly objective dismissal of inconvenient facts as “half truths” or dramatics is more than galling; it’s oppressive. The questions, “Why does this matter?” and, “Why are you so angry?” are conjoined twins, both hissing that we don’t even have a right to our own outrage.
One Last Word 