News, Weak
Word comes that the Washington Post Company is trying to find a buyer for Newsweek, because it has been losing "tens of millions" of dollars annually.
I know one way to save money! Make some cuts, and fast, on that Newsweek.com web site!
A recent Newsweek "web exclusive" had the brilliant Ramin Setoodeh explain that
[F]rankly, it's weird seeing [Sean] Hayes play straight. He comes off as wooden and insincere, like he's trying to hide something, which of course he is....
For decades, Hollywood has kept gay actors—Tab Hunter, Van Johnson, Anthony Perkins, Rock Hudson, etc.#8212;in the closet, to their own personal detriment. The fear was, if people knew your sexual orientation, you could never work again. Thankfully, this seems ridiculous in the era of Portia de Rossi and Neil Patrick Harris. But the truth is, openly gay actors still have reason to be scared. While it's OK for straight actors to play gay (as Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger did in Brokeback Mountain), it's rare for someone to pull off the trick in reverse.
This is arrant nonsense. Rare? The idea that gay or lesbian actors cannot play straight roles is absurd. I do not pretend to be completely up on popular culture, but I do not remember John Gielgud playing gay role after gay role, or Lily Tomlin playing only lesbian roles, or Ian McKellen flopping when he played straight roles, or Derek Jacobi seeming like he was hiding something about himself, or Richard Chamberlain being wooden and insincere. Just because Sean Hayes is undistinguished hardly proves anything.
The truth is that actors and actresses stay in the closet because there are a lot of bigots out there. Some are in show business and don't want to hire gays or lesbians. Others are the garden-variety bigots who view gays and lesbians as somehow subhuman—coming out of the closet means that one and one's partner are out of the closet in real life, and that is not always easy or safe or even possible.
Labels: heterosexual privilege, Newsweek, Stupid reporting tricks
Worth a Laugh
The tag line says it all: because real gay and lesbian news is too depressing.
Labels: Funny, heterosexual privilege
Deferral of Judgment
So much for sanity at American blood banks. All sorts of risky behaviors entail limited deferrals from donating, but male-to-male sexual contact, no matter what kind, still means a lifetime ban.
Before giving blood, all men are asked if they have had sex, even once, with another man since 1977, when the AIDS epidemic began in the United States, according to the drug agency. Those who say they have are barred from donating. The drug agency says those men are at increased risk of infection by H.I.V., which can be transmitted by blood transfusion. Anyone who has used intravenous drugs or been paid for sex is also permanently barred from donating blood.
In March 2006, the Red Cross, the international blood association AABB and America's Blood Centers proposed replacing the lifetime ban with a one-year deferral after male-to-male sexual contact. New and improved tests, which can detect H.I.V.-positive donors within 10 to 21 days of infection, make the lifetime ban unnecessary, the blood groups told the F.D.A.
In a document posted Wednesday, the drug agency said it would change its policy if it received data proving that doing so would not pose a "significant and preventable" risk to blood recipients.
The deferral guidelines make clear that some potentially serious conditions are not lifetime bans from donating. One can donate blood after recovering from many types of cancer. One can donate, after 12 months, after many types of exposure to hepatitis. One can donate, after 1 month, despite taking Propecia, which can cause birth defects in pregnant women. After 12 months, one can donate after successful treatment for syphilis or gonorrhea. After 3 years, one can donate after successful treatment for malaria.
What is particularly interesting is that blood donations are not tested for malaria, the passage of time is considered to be sufficient evidence that a previously ill donor is now no longer presenting a danger to a potential blood recipient. Yet a gay man who has always engaged in safer sex practices and has always tested negative for HIV and AIDS is permanently deferred.
The key difference is that lifting the proscription against sexually active gay men involves treating gay men as potentially healthy donors; admitting that homosexuality might be a healthy lifestyle would be a first for this administration.
Labels: blood donations, heterosexual privilege, Stupid Republican tricks
One Day Late
Yesterday was pluperfect with things to do besides blogging for out dozens of readers, so a belated link to International Day Against Homophobia, a great idea from Canada that has yet to take root in the United States.
Labels: heterosexual privilege
Separate and Quite Unequal
Why is gay marriage so important to some people? The easy answer is that every alternative to it, for gay couples, is so utterly lousy.
Nickie Brazier called UPS, where she is a driver, to add Heather Aurand to her health insurance the day after their Feb. 22 civil union in New Jersey, knowing it would save them $340 a month. But UPS said no. "They said it was because we’re not married," Ms. Brazier recalled.
Dr. Kevin Slavin was able to sign his partner up for the health plan at the hospital where he specializes in pediatric infectious diseases but soon learned that both men's benefits would be treated as taxable income—not the case for his married coworkers—and that his partner could not collect his pension if Dr. Slavin died.
Merissa Muench of Mount Olive, N.J., said her employer of seven years, a medical sterilization office where she is a technician, told her the company did not cover civil union partners.
"It just irks me that a guy they just hired, his wife—bing!—has health insurance," said Ms. Muench, 30, who declined to name her employer for fear of being fired. "What else does the gay American community have to do to prove that we're worth it just as much as you guys?"
Nearly two months after New Jersey became the third state to approve civil unions for same-sex couples, many are finding that all partnerships are not created equal, raising questions about whether the new arrangement adequately fulfills the promise of the State Supreme Court ruling that led to it.
Merissa Meunch just pointed out the utter absurdity of heterosexual privilege in American society. if encouraging marriage is so important that married couples ought to receive literally hundreds of special benefits, then those benefits ought to extend to gay and lesbian couples as well. Alas, too many Americans are content to treat gays and lesbians much worse than everyone else. Republicans have thrown their lot in with the Christian Reconstructionists who view homosexuality as somehow reprehensible; Democrats are too often too timid to point out the absurdity of encouraging only certain, God-approved, versions of families.
At least in Massachusetts, there is hope. In Massachusetts, the number of legislators who support gay marriage has increased from 50 members out of 200 to fully 141 out of 200. most of the difference has come from legislators changing their minds in the face of widespread evidence that same-sex marriage has been good for the state. And in New Hampshire, although the state legislature is unlikely to approve gay marriage anytime soon, an amendment to ban same-sex marriages went down to decisive defeat last month.
Labels: civil unions, gay marriage, heterosexual privilege
