How 25 years of homosexual activism in Hollywood have paid off

This season, a record number of broadcast television series are featuring sympathetic homosexual characters

If you're noticing your TV screen turning pink, it's not just your imagination. The new broadcast TV season includes 22 series featuring a total of 35 openly gay characters, according to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). GLAAD, which rides herd over all Hollywood scripts dealing with homosexuality, says the number of series with homosexual characters is a record. These series are on ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and the CW networks. The total figure does not include shows on cable, like The L Word on Showtime, or MTV's all-gay LOGO network.

A new Eye on Culture report from the Culture and Media Institute, "Lavender Propaganda," reveals the depth and breadth of the current media campaign to promote homosexuality to average Americans. But Hollywood became a uniformly pro-gay industry well before Will & Grace or the slew of 2008-9 network shows.

In 1996, the year before Ellen DeGeneres "came out" as a lesbian on Ellen, Los Angeles magazine writer David Ehrenstein boasted in a May cover story, "More than Friends": "There are openly gay writers on almost every major prime-time situation comedy you can think of . In short, when it comes to sitcoms, gays rule."

Here is an excerpt from my book The Age of Consent: The Rise of Relativism and the Corruption of Popular Culture about the gay influence on TV:

"Ehrenstein, a professed homosexual, cheerfully admits that gay writers are attempting to influence viewers with a homosexual agenda: `The gay and lesbian writers of today have been pushing the envelope any chance they get. In fact, they're encouraged to do so. Since current comedies are positively obsessed with the intimate sex lives of straight young singles, who better to write them than members of a minority famed for its sexual candor . as a result of the influx of gay writers, even the most heterosexual of sitcoms often possess that most elusive of undertones - the "gay sensibility"-`Frasier' being a case in point.' "The `gay sensibility consists, according to two homosexual writers, of `a very urban, very educated, ironic, detached, iconoclastic attitude.' Plus, a deliberate overdose of sexuality."

In her 1989 book Target: Primetime: Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television, Kathryn Montgomery explains why homosexual activists have been particularly effective in Hollywood: "Gays had one important advantage over other groups. They referred to it as their `agents in place.' According to gay activists, there were a substantial number of gay people working in the television industry who were not open about their life-style. Some held high-level positions. While unable to promote the gay cause on the inside, they could be very helpful to advocates on the outside, especially by leaking information. These `agents in place' became one of the linchpins of gay media strategy."

In January 1973, Ron Gold, the New York-based Gay Activist Alliance's Media Director, wrote to all three networks, requesting meetings. Gold, who had been a reporter for Variety, also helped stage a hostile confrontation at ABC that was strikingly similar to the strong-arm tactics employed at the American Psychiatric Association convention in 1971, when gay activists openly threatened psychiatrists who viewed homosexuality as a treatable disorder.

As Montgomery reports: "Before a meeting had been scheduled with ABC, GAA members were smuggled a script by one of their agents in place. It was for an upcoming episode of Marcus Welby, M.D., entitled `The Other Martin Loring' and it concerned a married man who asked Dr. Welby to help him with his homosexual tendencies. Welby assured the man that as long as he suppressed his homosexual desires, he would not fail as a husband and father.

"As Gold remembers, GAA leaders `blew a cork' when they read the script. ..Instead of waiting for an appointment with ABC executives, the activists - with the help of another network insider - `took over' the network executive offices. Recalls Gold: `We knew somebody who worked there who gave us a kind of place of the place and we did a little scouting in advance and we managed to sneak into the offices. The confrontation at ABC headquarters was hostile and explosive."

It ended with the arrests of several activists. Montgomery notes that although the program in question still aired, "it did have an impact on later decisions..ABC executives decided to invite gay activist comments on any new scripts dealing with homosexuality. Since gays had their own ways of getting scripts anyway, this approach was even more essential than with other groups."

The other networks soon followed, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation now routinely vets all TV scripts dealing with homosexuality to make sure that the public sees only what the activists want. That means, among other things, no programs showing "ex-gays," people who have overcome homosexual temptations, unless it is to mock them. Montgomery summarizes: "In time, the gay activists gained a reputation within the industry as the most sophisticated and successful advocacy group operating in network television."

The stakes go far beyond television. A September 2008 fundraising mailer from GLAAD proclaims: "History proves that social change drives legal and political progress. To succeed as a community, we must transform the way millions of Americans feel about us."

With a record number of homosexual characters on television, and only pro-gay story lines, it's not surprising that polls show that Americans are becoming increasingly accepting of homosexuality. The activists are well on their way toward their goal of recasting traditional sexual morality as a form of bigotry. The next step will be to bring government muscle down on traditionalists - just like they're doing right now in Canada and Europe.

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The Rage That's Not On Your Front Page

by Michelle Malkin

When a few unruly McCain-Palin supporters show their anger at campaign rallies, it's national news. It's an epidemic of "Weimar-like rage" and "violent escalation of rhetoric," according to New York Times columnist Frank Rich. It's the "re-emergence of the far right as a power in American politics," according to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne. It's a mass movement of GOP crowds "gripped by insane rage," according to newly minted Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman.

Too bad they don't give out global awards for the Blindest Eyes in Punditocracy. We've just hit a trifecta.

Are a few activists on the right getting out of hand? Probably. Between massive ACORN voter fraud, Bill Ayers' and Jeremiah Wright's unrepentant hatred of America, and John McCain's inability to nail Barack Obama on his longtime alliances with all of the above, conservatives have plenty to shout about these days.

But a couple of random catcallers do not a mob make. And there's an overflowing abundance of electoral rage on the left that won't make it onto your newspaper's front page.

Last month on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a small, brave contingent of McCain supporters marched through the streets with campaign signs. They were met by a menacing horde of New Yorkers who displayed their disapproval with a barrage of jeers and vulgar gestures. ("The number of middle fingers in the 'progressive crowd' is directly proportional to the number of Ph.D. degrees in the 10-block radius," one of the witnesses wryly observed.) A YouTube video of the confrontation now has nearly half a million views (www.youtube.com and search "Pro-McCain March in Manhattan"). But don't expect to find it on the nightly news. It doesn't fit the Angry Right narrative.

Neither does the near-riotous reaction of Obama supporters to a McCain-Palin sign in Democrat-dominated Prince George's County, Md. Buried in a back local section, The Washington Post reported this week that "pandemonium" broke loose when an unsuspecting businessman erected a "Country First. McCain/Palin." message on the marquee at his Colony South Hotel & Conference Center.

"Operators of neighborhood e-mail group lists cried foul to their memberships. The NAACP logged calls. Community leaders demanded boycotts of the hotel, a common venue for Democratic events," the little-noticed article reported. A black professor called the sign "a stink bomb in the middle of the living room" of Obama land. The poor hotel manager, Alan Vahabzadeh, surrendered. "I didn't even realize it was going to be like this."

Can't blame him for missing the fiery hint from Portland, Ore. -- where two deranged vandals were arrested after throwing a Molotov cocktail at a McCain yard sign in the middle of the night. Nope, that didn't make it into the columns of Rich, Dionne or Krugman. Doesn't fit the Angry Right narrative.

Speaking of "violent escalation of rhetoric" you never hear about: Obama supporters in Philadelphia sported "Sarah Palin is a [disgusting vulgarism referring to female genitalia]" T-shirts and yelled, "Let's stone her, old school" over the weekend.

An Internet artist has designated Palin an "M.I.L.P." -- "Mother I'd Like to Punch" -- and published a drawing of a man's fist knocking a tooth out of the Alaska governor's mouth and the glasses off her face.

"ABORT Palin" graffiti has sprouted on the sidewalks of Seattle, and "Abort Sarah Palin" bumper stickers are spreading in Web stores.

-- Palin-bashing Madonna performs before an audience of thousands, screeching and threatening to "kick her a**."

-- Getty Images publishes a photo of a man pointing a fake gun at the head of a cardboard cutout of Palin on display at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition building.

And no one blinks. Not a peep from the Obamedia. But when Palin simply spotlights Obama's longtime relationship with Weather Underground terrorist Bill "We Didn't Do Enough" Ayers? "Inciting violence," frets NBC reporter Ron Allen. "Concerned for Sen. Obama's safety," agonizes ABC reporter Terry Moran. "Beyond the pale," cries Obama campaign manager David Plouffe. As if the no-holds-barred Obama campaign has ever had a rhetorical pale to stake.

All the world's a Kabuki stage for the selectively outraged over rage.

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The reaction to Sarah Palin reveals feminists for the nasty, intolerant, hate-filled bitches that they are



Judging by the opinion polls this week, the Alaskan Governor, Sarah Palin, probably will not get to be the US vice-president. But in her brief starring role on the global stage she has been a powerful psychic enema, flushing out the poison at the heart of establishment feminism for all to see. No more sheathed claws or pretence about "tolerance" and "diversity". From Madonna to Sandra Bernhard, Pamela Anderson, Naomi Wolf, Lindsay Lohan and Kathy Lette, a certain type of influential progressive woman has been driven to insane rage by Palin's very existence.

Bernhard, a comedian in America, reportedly said Palin would be "gang-raped by my big black brothers" if she entered Manhattan, a comment she later denied making. In a deranged concert performance posted on YouTube, Bernhard calls Palin a "turncoat bitch [and] Uncle Woman . who jumps out of the shed and points her fingers at other women . You whore in your cheap f--king . cheap-ass plastic glasses and your hair all up. [You'll get] a bikini-waxed fresh Jewish t--t in your face".

Lette, the Australian expatriate author, described her as "very, very dangerous. There's something wrong with her . She's a post-feminist - she's kept her Wonderbra and burnt her brain."

The violent sexual language used against Palin would be intolerable, possibly criminal, from a man. Yet these women think nothing of describing the 44-year-old mother of five as a MILP: "A Mother I'd Like To Punch".

From the moment Palin emerged, the effect on some women has been like this, from an editor of online feminist magazine Jezebel: "My head almost exploded from the incandescent anger boiling in my skull. Many friends . said things like . 'This feminist wants to murk that idiotic c--t.' "

Not that Palin is a favourite of males of the left-leaning entertainment establishment, with Matt Damon last week damning her as a "scary thing". But the intemperate reaction by women to Palin flags something beside ideological differences - a weird, visceral rage, with its roots in some entrenched psychic pain. There is an echo of bitchy high-school jealousy of the popular queen bee from the snarling, self-mutilating nerd and goths who vainly lusted after the cute boys she snared.

The consolation for the losers is that homecoming queens are meant to get married, get pregnant, get fat and lose their looks so the self-made strugglers such as Bernhard and Madonna can patronise them at school reunions. Palin, by having it all, has cheated. Not only was she Miss Wasilla 1984, but she married her childhood sweetheart, Todd Palin, kept her figure, had five attractive, seemingly well-adjusted children and was successful in her career.

If she made any sacrifices or compromises they were not apparent. And she had won the marriage jackpot: a hunky house-husband who is able to take a back seat without losing his cojones. She juggled home and family, even breast-feeding in the office, without any angst, middle-class welfare, or even bags under her eyes. How did that work?

Instead of lauding the aspirational quality of Palin's achievements, establishment feminists despised her for showing up their inadequacies. There is much more than high school angst to Palin hatred. Her ideology is 180 degrees wrong - evangelical Christian, hunting, oil-drilling and, most important of all, anti-abortion. There is even a bumper sticker, "Abort Sarah Palin", and no diatribe against her fails to mention abortion.

Abortion is the emotional peg on which Palin-haters hang their hatreds and justify their intemperance. The touchstone issue which makes both sides hyperventilate has become such a bedrock article of faith for establishment feminists that they question it as little as their born-again Christian nemeses question the existence of God. Even in light of medical advances in foetal surgery, premature baby medical care and prenatal imaging, it is unthinkable that progressive women would rethink abortion, even late-term abortion. For them "choice" is not about choice at all, which is why Palin is such a threat.

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John Lewis's Race Grenade

A former civil-rights leader fans racial tensions.

Georgia Democrat John Lewis was a brave civil-rights leader, but that doesn't give him moral license to fan racial tensions today. Yet that's precisely what he did on Saturday by suggesting that John McCain and Sarah Palin were inciting violence a la segregationist George Wallace.

By raising questions about Barack Obama's relationship with terror-bomber William Ayers, the Republicans are "sowing the seeds of hatred and division," Mr. Lewis said. "During another period, in the not-too-distant past, there was a governor of a state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their Constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama."

Mr. Lewis's over-the-top analogy is nastier by far than anything the GOP nominees have said during this campaign. In any case, Mr. Ayers is white. The angry shouts last week at a couple of McCain-Palin rallies were ugly, but Mr. McCain earned boos himself by correcting supporters about Mr. Obama's ethnicity and calling him an honorable man. The Arizona Senator has also declined to make an issue of Mr. Obama's 20-year association with radical black preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, though that association is also about Mr. Obama's honesty, not race.

Mr. Lewis later tried to clarify what he called "misinterpretations" of his statement and that he never meant to compare the GOP candidates to Wallace, but the damage was done. Because of his civil-rights record, Mr. Lewis gets a pass from the media and his fellow politicians even when he makes incendiary comments. But with remarks like those on Saturday, he deserves to be seen less as a racial healer and more like any other politician who uses race as a sword.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, OBAMA WATCH (2), EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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