Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 17:58:34 -0700 From: Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Subject: GLAADAlert 01.30.98 GLAADALERT January 30, 1998 The GLAADAlert is the weekly activation tool of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation We May Lose Ellen Forever! GLAAD has learned that the decision from ABC on whether or not to renew Ellen for another season may happen as early as next week. More than ever, ABC needs to know how much of an impact this show has had on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender community and our families and friends. Don't let the voice of a radical fundamentalist minority be the only one that ABC hears. Let the network know how having a positive portrayal of a lesbian lead character on primetime television has affected your life and the lives of those close to you. Ellen has broken precedent after precedent by bringing America a honest, funny and poignant look at Ellen Morgan and in doing so, at lesbians and gay men everywhere. It is essential that the community and our friends rally around the television every Wednesday and support this landmark program. Since she and her character emerged from the closet, Ellen DeGeneres has become an unstoppable force in fighting for equal rights. Ellen has brought the real experience of the lesbian and gay community to millions of viewers in a landmark fashion. WRITE ABC AND DISNEY NOW!!! IT MAY BE OUR LAST CHANCE!!! Every Thursday, GLAAD produces Ellen Watch, an e-mailed list of the previous nights sponsors. E-mail glaad@glaad.org to be added to the growing list. Contact: … Jamie Tarses, Entertainment President, ABC, 2040 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles, CA, feedback form: http://www.abc.com/vvoice/Viewcons1.html … Michael Eisner, Chairman & David Newman, President of Network TV, The Walt Disney Company, 500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA 91521, Fax: (818) 560.1930, E-mail via WWW: http://www.disney.com/Mail Gia: Supermodel of the World On January 31, HBO will premier Gia, a biographical drama of arguably the world's first supermodel. The film about Gia, portrayed by recent Golden Globe winner Angelina Jolie, explores the model's troubled youth, her rise to super-stardom, her lesbian relationship, her constant need for love and attention, her battle with heroin and finally her death from AIDS in 1986. Throughout the film, Gia's girlfriend Linda (Elizabeth Mitchell) portrays one of only a few people in her life who cares deeply for Gia, finally demanding that Gia choose between her and drugs. While Gia certainly does not depict the healthiest of environments or lives, Gia's relationship with Linda is depicted as one of the only real, tangible redeeming parts of the supermodel's life. In addition, the film may in fact be one the most same-sex explicit movies ever made for TV. Lesbian, bisexual and gay relationships are all depicted throughout. Please check out Gia, and write HBO. Contact: Jeffrey Bewkes, President, HBO, 1100 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036-6712, fax: 212.512.8051 Coming Out Party of Five On the January 28 episode of FOX's Party of Five, Sarah's boyfriend, Elliot (Christopher Gorham) comes out as gay. Suspicion is first raised by Bailey's (Scott Wolf) girlfriend, Annie (Paige Turco), and her daughter, who is playing with two Ken dolls representing Bailey and Elliot. She ends up pretending they are boyfriends, and Bailey tries to figure out whether or not Elliot is gay. In a clumsy scene, Bailey asks Elliot for decorating tips, and whether he prefers opera to sports, and if he likes Cats. Elliot says he hates musicals, and asks why Bailey is acting so strangely. Later, Elliot goes to Sallinger's, the restaurant Bailey manages, and at a candlelit table in front of a roaring fire, says "I think, maybe, I am...you know, gay, like you. You've made it so much easier for me." Bailey replies, "It's totally cool that you're gay. I have no opinion about that, But...I'm not. I was just trying to find out if you were." Elliot leaves in tears, and breaks up with Sarah without telling her why. Bailey tells her Elliot is gay, and she confronts him in a coffeehouse, saying, "You should have told me." Elliot replies, "I was just trying to figure everything out at once. I wasn't sure. I didn't want it to be true....When I met you, I thought, 'If I can love this woman, maybe it'll make it all go away.'" Sarah responds, "I just don't get men at all." Elliot agrees, saying, "Well, welcome to the club." In the end, Sarah realizes she still wants to be close with Elliot, and after seeing a movie together, a man rollerblades by them and they each admire him and laugh together. Hopefully, this gay character will enjoy a higher profile than Mitchell Anderson did as Claudia's violin teacher. By having Elliot come out, Party of Five has an excellent opportunity to develop the character and the reactions of the rest of the cast as he becomes more open and accepting of himself. GLAAD has discovered that Elliot is not currently included in any of the scripts before the show goes on hiatus March 11-April 22. Commend FOX and the producers of Party of Five for having Elliot come out of the closet, and encourage them to continue developing his character and give him a regular storyline and prominence in the ensemble cast. Contact: … Peter Roth, President of Fox Entertainment Group, Fox Television Network, 10201 West Pico Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90064-2606 … Ken Topolsky, Executive Producer, Party of Five, 10202 West Washington Boulevard, Garland Building, Culver City, CA 90232, fax: 310.244.2257 I Was A Teenage, Er, Werewolf Along with Party of Five's Elliot, a football-playing jock came out as gay on the January 27 episode of The WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, making this week Gay Youth Coming Out Week on network television. Hopefully it is a sign of things to come. On Buffy, a werewolf is terrorizing Sunnydale and Buffy, Xander and Willow set out to figure out who it is. Xander thinks he's found the lycanthrope in a burly young man who is aggressive, obnoxious and misogynistic, posturing around his guy friends by making girls feel uncomfortable with sexual comments and knocking the books out of girls' arms so he can watch them bend over to pick them up. Xander approaches him in the school locker room and says he knows what the cad has been doing at night and confessing he's had a similar experience (on a prior show, Xander communed with an ancient rabid hyena). The jock misunderstands Xander and hesitatingly admits that he, too, is gay, and how great it is not to feel alone anymore, knowing that Xander is also gay. While Xander is not, he does not feel the need to correct the gay youth's misinterpretation, though he is somewhat flustered by the experience. They promise not to tell anyone about the "secret." Later, it turns out that Xander is the werewolf. Near the end of the episode, the gay youth is seen again, his demeanor totally changed. His coming out has made him nicer to women and he now stops other guys from being sexist jerks. He and Xander make a vague reference to their earlier conversation, but remain true to their pact not to reveal the secret. On a program full of secret loves, secret identities and dark shadows, bringing a closeted gay character onto the show only adds depth and sophistication to the metaphors the show already employs. Some film critics have interpreted such classic werewolf films as I Was A Teenage Werewolf as metaphors for the experience of the closet and feelings of public ostracization that many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people face, particularly young people just realizing their sexual orientation. On this episode of Buffy, that metaphor is made more explicit and the largely youth-oriented viewership of the show benefits from the representation of a young person coming to terms with being gay and coming out. Please commend the WB and the producers of Buffy for bringing this young man out of the closet, and encourage the writers of the show to develop the character and bring him into more storylines. Contact: … Jamie Kellner, President, WB Television Network, 4000 Warner Boulevard, #34-R, Burbank, CA 91522, fax: 818.977.6808 … Joss Whedon, Executive Producer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 1800 Stewart Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404, fax: 310.315.4125, WWW: http://www.buffyslayer.com Just Shoot Stereotypes The January 29 episode of Just Shoot Me!, NBC's wacky look at the glamour magazine industry, featured Brian Dennehy as Blush office manager Dennis Finch's (David Spade) macho fireman father trying to re-establish a relationship with the son he thinks is gay. Regular viewers of the show know that despite Dennis' flighty attitude and catty remarks, he is quite the ladies' man. Dennis' father only sees that his slight son, who as a youth played the harp instead of football and now prefers Showboat to boat shows, must be gay because he's not a big butch firefighter like his other two sons. To his credit, the father decides to support Dennis, going so far as to purchase them comical matching t-shirts proclaiming "It's raining men!" Dennis tries repeatedly to get his father to understand that although he might not be very masculine, he's not gay. Dennis' two brothers, also in town for a firefighter's convention, join him and his father for a dinner during which it is revealed that one of the brothers is a closeted gay man, causing the father to retreat emotionally once again. Just Shoot Me! brings up two very good points with this amusing episode: First, stereotypes are unreliable. Second, closeting oneself makes it difficult for others to know the real you. While Dennis' father assumed he was gay, the dad didn't know how to approach him but finally decided he was just going to forge ahead and get to know the "real" Dennis. When he later realizes it's one of his non-stereotypical sons who is really gay, and has kept it from him all these years, he stumbles back into his own emotional closet. Without the son's sexual orientation out in the open, it feels like a "dirty little secret" that keeps the father guessing and confused. Please thank NBC and the producers of Just Shoot Me! for this funny and thoughtful look at sexual orientation, the closet, and acceptance. Contact: … Warren Littlefield, President of Entertainment, NBC Television, 3000 West Alameda Avenue, Burbank, CA 91523-0001 … Steve Levitan, Executive Producer, Just Shoot Me, 4024 Radford Avenue, Bungalow 6, Studio City, CA 91604, fax: 818.508.2334 The Right's Wrong Agenda In the January 29 San Francisco Chronicle, columnist Adair Lara looks at the right-wing blockade on openly gay philanthropist Jim Hormel's appointment as ambassador of Luxembourg. "A couple of [conservative senators] are worried that Jim will take his 'gay agenda' with him," she writes. "Jim Hormel (his fortune comes from Spam--his family made it, my family ate it) is a local philanthropist, giving money to breast cancer research, AIDS research, the Ballet and Symphony, but that hasn't stopped the senators from looking very hard to find reasons not to make him an ambassador...[Senators] Smith and Inhofe might be sincere in thinking that being gay is something you can be an advocate of, or not--like, I don't know, water-skiing. They believe that homosexuality is wrong and that it's the sort of thing that can be encouraged, the way Joe Camel encourages kids to smoke cigarettes. If they're right, then sending to Luxembourg someone who has chosen this 'lifestyle' and approves of it for others would be dangerous. It might mean the citizens of Luxembourg would decide that they wanted to be gay, too. If it's not a lifestyle, and gays are just doing what is natural to them, with or without encouragement, then of course being gay becomes a human rights issue. Even Republicans who worry about 'gay agendas' would not oppose someone on the grounds that he should not be what he is. That would be a violation of human rights." Please thank the San Francisco Chronicle for this thoughtful commentary. Contact: Adair Lara, c/o San Francisco Chronicle, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-2988, fax: 415.495.2067 Gay Poets and Navy Cadets Mix It Up In the January 28 Chronicle of Higher Education, U.S. Naval Academy English professor Bruce Fleming writes about the challenges of teaching boys learning to inhabit a profoundly homophobic institution: the military. While teaching Wilfred Owen, several of the students asked why they had to read gay poets. One student said that he always assumed that "fags wouldn't kill anybody," but since Owen did, "he was okay." Describing the military as relying on "a particular form of heterosexual male bonding: a channeling of male aggression outward, which keeps it from being directed towards members of the group," he notes that gay men's and women's presence could mean "some heads, might, at times, turn sideways. The [military's] structure is deeply male, and thus, hardly by chance, both deeply misogynist and deeply homophobic." He writes, "The truth is that the male bonding at the Academy, is profoundly, in all senses but the one that conservatives fear, homoerotic. Straight men even mingle body fluids--as a way of bonding--through blood and sweat rather than semen, or through tears in situations of great stress or happiness. Such bonding is uncomfortably close to the homosexual world the military says it rejects." He recalls one student saying how the men in his company share everything. "'We even share our women!' He laughed again, looking for an example that was even stronger. 'Heck,' he said, having found it, 'we'd even share each others' jockstraps!' Linkage through women, fine. Best of all, linkage to other men. How odd this would sound to someone coming in from the outside, and how normal it sounds at the Academy. What have we done?" Fleming gives insight into perhaps the greatest reason that some military leaders oppose protection for servicemembers from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation: Acknowledging gay people--and men in particular--means that the hypermasculine, fiercely heterosexual and homoerotic culture of the military would have to change. And that the line between intimacies engaged in by gay men and military men is very blurry at times. Please thank the Chronicle of Higher Education for this engaging and provocative article. Contact: Corbin Gwaltney, Editor-in-Chief, Chronicle of Higher Education, 1255 23rd Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037, fax: 202.452.1033, e-mail: editor@chronicle.com When Irish Eyes Aren't Smiling As the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) in New York City gears up for another year of trying to gain inclusion in the St. Patrick's Day parade, the local NBC network affiliate has recently committed to airing the parade in 1998. In the past, WPIX has aired the parade, and this year WNBC President Dennis Swanson specifically sought it out for broadcast, in spite of the parade's hostile past with Irish lesbians and gay men and the fact that in a 1997 poll, 75 percent of New Yorkers felt that ILGO should be allowed to march. ILGO and GLAAD are asking that Swanson and WNBC reconsider broadcast unless the parade organizers, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, relent and allow all Irish people to march, regardless of sexual orientation. In addition, ILGO has suggested that WNBC produce an in-depth special exploring the issue of homophobia and ethnic identity, including but not limited to the Irish community, for broadcast near the parade date. Please let WNBC know how you feel about serving as the medium through which the Ancient Order of Hibernians display their intolerance of their fellow Irish people. ILGO indicates that Swanson most prefers getting messages via fax or snail-mail, but e-mail is also received. Contact: Dennis Swanson, President, WNBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, NY 10020, fax: 212.664.3201, e-mail: NBC4ny@nbc.com. GLAADAlert Media Round-Up: More Play On AOL and McVeigh In the past week, federal judge Stanley Sporkin granted a full injunction for sailor Timothy R. McVeigh (no relation to the Oklahoma City bomber), ruling he remain on active duty until his lawsuit against the Navy for breaking both "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act is resolved. In addition, AOL broke their own terms of service and possibly federal law in giving confidential information about McVeigh to the Navy. The media continues to speak out on the injustice of the military, the absurdity of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and more: … On January 28, an editorial in the Moline, Illinois Dispatch, said, "A federal judge got it right. Too bad AOL and the Navy got it wrong from the beginning. Unless the Internet is to become little more than a tool for federal investigators, it is absolutely essential that the privacy of its users be protected." … The San Francisco Chronicle's January 20 editorial said, "President Clinton, who agreed to the compromise 'don't ask, don't tell' in the tenuous early days of his administration, should now push for a policy that more clearly respects the contributions and the privacy of gays in the military." … On January 24, the Washington Post had an editorial noting that AOL called the release of information a "human error," but says, "Such statements must ring hollow for someone whose career the mistake derailed. But they ought to be heard clearly by those in charge of devising security barriers for the enormous amounts of genuinely sensitive data that, if mistakenly released, can cause permanent changes for the worse in an individual's life." Contact: … Russell Scott, Managing Editor, The Dispatch, 1720 Fifth Avenue, Moline, IL 61265-7977, fax: 309.757.4992, e-mail: ras@qconline.com … John Diaz, Editor, Editorial/Opinion Page, San Francisco Chronicle, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-2988, fax: 415.543.7708, e-mail: chronletters@sfgate.com … Stephen Rosenfeld, Deputy Editor, Editorial Page, Washington Post, 1150 15th Street NW, Washington, DC 20071-0002, fax: 202.334.5269, e-mail: rosenfelds@washpost.com or via WWW: htttp://www.washingtonpost.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) glaad@glaad.org TO REPORT DEFAMATION IN THE MEDIA - Call GLAAD's Alertline at 1.800.GAY.MEDIA or go to the GLAAD Web Site at www.glaad.org and report through our Alertline Online. TO JOIN GLAAD AND RECEIVE GLAAD's DISPATCH AND QUARTERLY IMAGES MAGAZINE, call 1.800.GAY.MEDIA or join on the Web today at www.glaad.org/glaad/join/join-about.html TO SUBSCRIBE TO GLAAD-Net, GLAAD's electronic mailing list, send e-mail to majordomo@vector.casti.com with the message "Subscribe GLAAD-Net" TO UNSUBSCRIBE, send e-mail to majordomo@vector.casti.com with the message "Unsubscribe GLAAD-Net" GLAAD is a national organization that promotes fair, accurate and inclusive representation as a means of challenging discrimination based on sexual orientation or identity. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "GLAAD" and "Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation" are registered trademarks of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Inc.