No one can forget one of the truly remarkable events in the entire panorama of western civilization occurred: Ellen DeGeneres declaring her lesbian orientation before a huge television audience on her weekly sitcom produced by the Disney company on ABC-TV.
Now, Ellen´s coming out was, in the view of most mainstream observers, perhaps the greatest advance for humankind since the discovery of the wheel. The amount of attention and the volume of the hosannas that greeted this event was astonishing. It was on the cover of news magazines, and there were news specials on television--it was surely the best publicized show ever on television.
Now was this in truth a magnificent advance for civilization, for decency and for fairness, or was it, as some other Americans believe, a confirmation of the antifamily and antimarriage agenda of the entertainment industry? And does that alleged antifamily agenda relate in any way to the very strong representation of homosexual individuals in positions of creative influence in that industry?
That question was, of course, very much on the mind of the twelve thousand delegates to the 1997 Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in Dallas who voted overwhelmingly for a boycott of all things Disney. I will address whether that was good strategy, but for the moment we can ask how many Southern Baptists would honor a boycott, for instance, of ABC-TV, which is owned by the Disney company, if ABC were covering the Super Bowl one year?
In any event, the boycott that was announced by America´s largest Protestant denomination (there are 15.7 million members of the Southern Baptist Convention) was a very serious challenge to the entertainment industry and was directly related to the treatment of homosexuality in the mass media. The people at the convention spoke very specifically of the "Ellen declaration," Ellen´s emergence from the closet, as being the final straw that provoked the boycott. They were also objecting to the family benefits policy towards homosexual partners that the Disney company had instituted.
I am going to ask three fundamental questions concerning the mass media --particularly movies and television -- and the media treatment of homosexuals and homosexuality.
First, is the over-representation of homosexuals in positions of influence in the media either primarily or prominently responsible for negative messages concerning the family that many observers perceive?
Second, is monetary gain the prime motivation for mass media treatment of homosexuality? Is that motivation simply the profit motive--which, of course, usually explains and is used to explain almost everything in Hollywood. Third, is there a consistent set of messages regarding homosexuality being sent in television series and motion pictures and in other mass media, and are those messages being accepted and having a influence on the larger American public? Let me take each of those questions in turn.
The Influence of Gays in the Entertainment Industry?
Let’s turn to the first question, whether there is some sort of association between the very prominent role of gay people in the entertainment industry and the very derisive attitude towards the family and towards marriage that many people perceive throughout the world of television and the movies. A reader familiar with the mainstream press might assume that he would know my answer to the question because of a fascinating book by Michelangelo Signorile, a columnist for Outweek, and author of a recent book entitled Outing Yourself. 1. An earlier book of his in which I am discussed at some length is called Queer in America. I was delighted when my friend David Horowitz called to my attention that the final chapter in Queer in America is called “Queer in Hollywood, from McCarthy to Medved.” Now, truly, during the era of the blacklist there were some lives ruined in Hollywood, and people suffered--it was a huge upheaval. Still, I am enormously “flattered” in this dubious context to be considered influential enough to be compared to Senator McCarthy.
In his imputing to me some of these powers of darkness and destruction, Signorile writes the following: “For Medved to side with the Christian right without qualifying their criticisms is not only disingenuous, it is dangerous. But more disturbing than Medved´s failure to distinguish these nuances is his warped belief that gays in the industry actually create what he perceived to be Hollywood’s negative and ‘permissive’ atmosphere. According to Medved, Hollywood´s obsession with violent and deviant behavior must be the work of ‘Hollywood’s powerful homosexual community.’”
Now, when I read this, I was a little nonplussed, because in my book Hollywood Versus America, which he misquotes, I have a chapter entitled “The Myth of a Gay Conspiracy.” In that chapter I write: “The willingness of the networks to accept major losses on gay-themed programming raises the sensitive but unavoidable issue of the impact of Hollywood’s powerful homosexual community.” “Some of the popular culture’s most outspoken critics,” I continue, “contend that the over-representation of homosexuals in every corner of the creative community leads directly to the entertainment industry´s anti-family bias and its obsession with violent and deviant behavior.” Then in the very next sentence I write: “these charges offer a one-dimensional and misleading explanation of a complex phenomenon and should be rejected by all fair-minded people. Those who look for evidence of some huge gay conspiracy at the heart of Hollywood will be frustrated in that search for the simple reason that no such conspiracy exists. Some militant gay rights organizations may indeed pursue a radical agenda in their efforts to influence the messages of the popular culture. But homosexual performers and film-makers are far from unanimous in advancing that agenda in their work. The gay men and lesbian women who play prominent roles in the entertainment industry are as diverse and dissimilar as their straight colleagues. They are involved on every side of every significant issue that currently divides the popular culture.” That is my position.
Anyone who assumes that one´s position in the entertainment industry is determined by the all-powerful influence of your sexual orientation is someone who ignores history and ignores the present. That simply is not the case.
In recent biographies of Danny Kaye it has become fairly clear that the great entertainer actor, singer, and comedian was bisexual. He had certain involvements and died of AIDS, apparently from a blood transfusion. The fact that Danny Kaye was bisexual in no way detracts from my eagerness for my children to enjoy his wonderful movies, which remain truly classic family entertainment. Similarly, Howard Ashman, who also died of AIDS and who was an uncloseted homosexual, was one of the guiding creative forces behind what I consider to be one of the finest children’s movies of recent years, "Beauty and the Beast." He wrote the lyrics for, and was one of the producers of, the film.
The truth is--and we have to confront it--that it is unjust to blame Hollywood’s disgusting work on gay people. Overwhelmingly, the people who do that disgusting work are rampagingly heterosexual--and they are out of the closet. Oliver Stone has been accused of many things, but no one has ever accused him of being gay, and he most assuredly is not. Paul Verhoeven--the creator of such ornaments to our civilization as Basic Instinct--which I reviewed under the title “Basically It Stinks”--is most assuredly heterosexual and feels called upon to prove his orientation frequently. The notion that somehow it is the presence of gay people in the industry that is the cause of all this dismal work is simply ignorant and, moreover, dangerous.
The problem in Hollywood is not the gay presence. Hollywood’s treatment of homosexuality is not governed by the sexual orientation of those inside the industry, but by social pressure from people largely outside the industry.
Some of that pressure was brought to bear on me in April 1992, when I was covering the Academy Awards. That year the ceremony was saturated with the ubiquitous red AIDS ribbon, which everyone was compelled to wear. When I say “compelled to wear” I am not exaggerating. I was out in front of the music center where the Academy Awards were held and was about to go on the air to broadcast the arrival of the various stars, when one of the producers came up to me and said “alright, you´re about to go on air.” They touched up the makeup, and he said, “Oh, here is your AIDS ribbon,” and they put the AIDS ribbon on my lapel. I immediately took the AIDS ribbon off and said, “No, it´s not my AIDS ribbon, it’s your AIDS ribbon.” The producer responded, “No, you’re going on our air, you’re representing our network, you will wear the AIDS ribbon.” I replied, “I will not wear the AIDS ribbon,” to which he responded, "Are you a bigot, are you a hater, do you want all gay people to die"? I said, “I emphatically do not. However, my grandmother recently passed away of Alzheimer’s disease and I am extremely conscious of the fact that there are many more victims of Alzheimer’s. If there were a ribbon I could wear for Alzheimer’s I would wear that, but I resist the idea of being forced to wear this one.” Then he said, “You will be the only person within a square mile of this spot who is not wearing an AIDS ribbon tonight and we will not have it.” I said, “I am willing to take that risk.” I was thrilled later that night when one other person appeared without an AIDS ribbon, Clint Eastwood. In any event I then heard a hysterical lecture along the lines of “Well, you´ll never work in this town again.” And that in fact was the last year I covered the Oscars live--but I did go on the air, despite threats and imprecations, without my AIDS ribbon.
At that same ceremony, there were a great many and very angry gay demonstrators. Why were they protesting the Oscars? Because 1992 was the year Silence of the Lambs won several awards, and in Silence of the Lambs the mass-murderer, the one who skins his victims (not the one who eats his victims)--is a rather effeminate character who is by implication gay. The activists were protesting what they saw as the movie’s homophobia. One of their targets was Jonathan Demme, who won best director that year for directing Silence of the Lambs. The protestors had signs and chanted slogans condemning Jonathan Demme for his insensitivity, for his hatred of gay people. The result of all that condemnation was a movie called Philadelphia, which completely restored Jonathan Demme to the good graces of the gay community.
Now why did Demme make Philadelphia? Did he believe that the truly minuscule gay community in this country could end his career? No--he had just won the Academy Award. But he became convinced that it was necessary to make a sincere gesture of contrition, a sincere demonstration that he was not a bigot, because no one in Hollywood wants to be accused of homophobic bigotry. A complex combination of expectation and criticism and demonstrations, not sexual orientation, led a heterosexual filmmaker, with the support of heterosexual studio executives, to make Philadelphia to advance fundamental claims and purposes of the gay rights movement.
A Response to the Market?
That brings us to the second question I want to ask. Can you explain the current plethora of gay material in the media as simply a response to the market? Philadelphia is a good place to begin, because Philadelphia was deemed a very difficult project to sell, but the film became a substantial box office hit. I believe part of the reason it became such a hit was that there were many Americans who felt that going to Philadelphia was some sort of good deed. As if going to see the movie and paying your money to see it, you would help to deal with this AIDS crisis, which we all feel as a painful and lamentable situation in the United States.
But Philadelphia has not been alone. Many recent films on gay themes have been substantial box office hits. You can explain the success of Philadelphia because it was a good movie. There is an absolutely wretched movie called To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything Julie Newmar, which is really one of the worst films I have seen in recent years--and that covers a lot of territory. It is a film about a bunch of transvestites (played by John Leguizamo, Wesley Snipes, and Patrick Swayze) who get stranded in a homophobic small town in Kansas and then later convert the small town to the charms of platform shoes and Judy Garland. The film is dreadful, and it became a huge box office hit. Even more strikingly, a film called The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, based upon the old French film and musical La Cage Aux Folles, became a very major box office hit.
People in Hollywood can argue that what they are doing is not in any way catering to a specific group or a certain agenda, but simply responding intelligently, as the market system says they should. There is a market for this material, they say, so they distribute it. But consider that the films I have mentioned are rare exceptions among the gay-themed material which has been released, most of which is emphatically rejected by the public, and in which the public seems to have absolutely no interest at all.
For instance, there are other films like, Love, Valor, Compassion, a film I reviewed, which is about eight gay males who meet over three summer weekends and disport themselves in a sylvan lake, comparing lesions and talking in witty, but rather depressing terms of their problems and difficulties and their AIDS medication regimens. The film, an adaptation of a Tony Award-winning play, received superb reviews everywhere except in the New York Post, where I reviewed it. I found it a dreary, pretentious, almost unwatchable piece of work. When the film opened, people had to be subpoenaed to see it. It had no discernible box office impact.
That same was true of the motion picture Priest. It was a film about a right-wing Catholic priest in Great Britain who leads a double life, secretly dressing in black leather and going to gay bars on Friday nights and picking up young boys--and it has some very graphic sex scenes in it. The film was released with much fanfare because it is a profoundly anti-Catholic film, not just because of the portrayal of the one gay priest, but because of the entire portrayal of the Church and its teachings. I spoke to theater owners under contract to show the film, and there were showings in different parts of the country where literally the only person watching Priest would be the projectionist, who had a union contract and had to unspool this film even though nobody was there. The film was not a huge box office hit.
Nor was It’s My Party, a film starring Eric Roberts about a farewell party for an AIDS patient. Nor was Jeffrey, which features a whole subplot about a homosexual priest who tries to molest a handsome young gay male in the confessional. Jeffrey was released with much fanfare and, again, very positive reviews. Have you ever heard of this film?
In My Best Friend’s Wedding there is a homosexual character who plays the boss and close friend of Julia Roberts. One reviewer described the person who played this character, Rupert Everett, as terrific--listen to this--as the “voice of sweet homosexual reason in the midst of this heterosexual hubbub.” That sort of part, the voice of sweet homosexual reason, the nice-guy neighbor in the flat next door, has appeared in countless movies and it appears in countless television shows. I checked with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which keeps what they call a scoreboard of gay characters in television.
Prior to Ellen´s emergence from the closet, in April 1997, their scoreboard reflected that there were twenty-nine identified gay characters on network television, twenty-two of them on prime-time, virtually all supporting characters. They are not there for financial reasons or for ratings, I can assure you. If Rupert Everett’s character had not been a gay male, My Best Friend’s Wedding would not have done a dime less business at the box office. No one is tuning in to Roseanne or to Friends in order to see the supporting gay character or the occasional appearance of a gay character. After all, there is absolutely no evidence, there is no marketing study, there is certainly no statistical analysis of America that suggests that this kind of characterization is necessary to appeal to a large audience.
Consider how many religious characters are on television -- Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. There have been a few shows in recent years about clergy--such as Dan Aykroyd’s Soul Man, in which he plays a comical clergyman--but still, are there anywhere near twenty-nine religious supporting characters? Of course not. Now does anyone believe this is a representation of reality? Does anyone believe there are more gay people in America than religious people? This is a profoundly religious country where, in every survey done, fifty percent of us go to church or synagogue at least once a month. Over forty percent of us go once a week. That is never reflected on television.
Any one who argues that the inclusion of homosexual characters in movies and television is a reflection of reality or the box office is simply not paying attention. Because, frankly, if you want to make money-- if that is your prime motivation--there are easier ways to make money than by handling gay themes, which are not popular with advertisers.
Even with Ellen, before the “coming out” episode, the show lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising from Chrysler, J.C. Penney, Wrigley, and other corporations that normally sponsored her show, but did not want to be associated with that episode.
One network even announced that when Thirtysomething had one scene where they briefly showed two gay males expressing affection to one another one night in bed they lost more than a million dollars in advertising revenue on that show. This is not a safe and easy way to make money. The idea that gay characterization and the gay themes in American media is only a response to box office demands is wrong.
Why Gay Portrayals in the Media?
And that brings me to the final question. If it is not the gay orientation of people in Hollywood, and if it is not simply a desire to make money, why do we all of a sudden have this tremendous upsurge in gay themes and gay characterization--nearly all quite positive? Are there, in fact, some messages and values that are being consistently communicated by mass media in this country, and is that communication proving effective with the public at large?
Now, in answering this question I am going to do something which very few straight people do: I am going to take the gay press seriously. For a variety of reasons, most straight people do not read the gay press. Nevertheless, in the same way you have absolutely no idea of what the Palestinian Liberation Organization really is about if you only read its statements in English language press (that is, if you never read its statements in Arabic newspapers), you have absolutely no idea about the agenda of the radical elements in the gay community if you only read statements given out to the straight press. The PLO talks only about peace, brotherhood, understanding, and acceptance when they speak to English language press, the New York Times or the Washington Post, but then in Arabic papers talks about blood and horror and pushing people into the sea. Likewise, if you simply read the straight press and hear from the gay organizations there, all you hear about is acceptance and tolerance and love and kindness and brotherhood and human rights. There is a very different agenda that emerges if you look at some of the material in gay publications.
For instance, going back a good deal, in January of 1983 Dennis Altman wrote in NY Native, a New York homosexual newspaper, “We are essentially a radical movement and in as far as we are successful we do indeed break down the hegemony of certain traditional values about sex and relationships. Often this perception is argued in terms of the need to defend our own minorities, whether they be man-boy lovers, transvestites, or sadomasochists--a point with which I would agree.”
Most significant to me is an absolutely remarkable article that appeared in another gay publication, a magazine called Christopher Street. It also appeared many years ago, and the reason I am bringing it up now, even though the article appeared in December of 1984, is that it reflects exactly what has happened in the American media. It is a step-by-step approach that has been realized with admirable precision. The article is called, “Waging Peace: A Gay Battle Plan to Persuade Straight America.” The authors are two officials of the National Gay Task Force, Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill. In one section of the article they list six principles for the persuasion of straights. We can actually break this down into three primary focuses: one, to desensitize and normalize; two, to emphasize gay victim status; and three, to demonize defenders of the family:
As already stated, we think the first order of business is the desensitization of the American public concerning gays and gay rights. To desensitize the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with keen emotion. Almost any behavior begins to look normal if you are exposed to enough of it. The way to benumb raw sensitivities about homosexuality, is to have a lot of people talk a great deal about the subject in a neutral or supportive way. Constant talk builds the impression that public opinion is at least divided on the subject and that a sizeable segment accepts or even practices homosexuality. Even rancorous debates between opponents and defenders serve the purpose of desensitization so long as "respectable" gays are front and center to make their own pitch. The main thing is to talk about gayness until the issue becomes thoroughly tiresome.
I would say “mission accomplished.” They continue, with remarkable prescience and accuracy: “Where we talk is important. The visual media, film and television, are plainly the most powerful image-makers in Western civilization. The average American household watches over seven hours of television daily. Those hours open up a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed. As far as desensitization is concerned, the medium is the message of normalcy. So far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert weapon in the battle to desensitize the mainstream. Bit by bit, over the past ten years, gay characters and gay themes have been introduced into TV programs and films. On the whole the movement has been encouraging.” Here they begin to talk about the opposition: “We can undermine the moral authority of homophobic churches by portraying them as antiquated backwaters badly out of step with times and with the latest findings of psychology. Against the mighty pull of institutional religion one must set the mightier draw of science and public opinion. Such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches before on such topics as divorce and abortion. With enough open talk about the prevalence and the acceptability of homosexuality, that alliance can again work here.”
This brings us to point two: “Portray gays as victims, not as aggressive challengers. In any campaign to win over the public, the gays must be cast as victims in need of protection, so that straights will be inclined by reflex to assume the role of protector. If gays are portrayed instead as a strong prideful tribe promoting a rigidly nonconformist and deviant lifestyle, they are more likely to be seen as a public menace that justifies resistance and oppression. For that reason, we must forgo our temptation to strut our gay pride publicly whenever it conflicts with the gay victim image.” They continue, “An additional theme of the campaign should be more aggressive and upbeat, to offset the increasing bad press that these times have brought to homosexual men and women. The campaign should paint gays as superior pillars of society.”
And then they come to the final point: At a latter stage of the media campaign for gay rights it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents. To be blunt, they must be vilified. [“Hollywood from McCarthy to Medved”] Our goal here is twofold. First, we seek to replace the mainstream pride about its homophobia with shame and guilt.
Second, the public must be shown images of ranting homophobes whose secondary traits and beliefs disgust middle America. These images might include: the Klu Klux Klan demanding that gays be burnt alive or castrated; bigoted southern ministers drooling with hysterical hatred to a degree that looks both comical and deranged; menacing punks, thugs, and convicts speaking cooly about the “fags” they have killed or would like to kill; a tour of Nazi camps where homosexuals were tortured and gassed. We have already indicated some of the images which might be damaging to the homophobic vendetta. These images should be combined with those of their gay victims by a method propagandists call “the bracket technique.” For example, for a few seconds an unctuous, beady-eyed southern preacher is seen pounding the pulpit in rage about these sick abominable creatures, and, while his tirade continues over the sound track, the picture switches to pathetic photos of badly beaten persons or to photos of gays who look decent, harmless, or likeable. Then we cut back to the poisonous face of the preacher, and so forth. The contrast speaks for itself. The effect is devastating.
I submit that the effect has been devastating. Hearing the agenda outlined so brilliantly in this article, can anyone doubt that part of the problem, in what some people have called the culture war, is that one side is prepared and organized and determined, and the other side is just gradually beginning to wake up?
Responding to the Entertainment Media Trends
In this context, I happen to believe that the decision by the Southern Baptist Convention to boycott Disney was a profound mistake, and an unforgivable mistake, frankly, because the Baptists are not boycotting certain objectionable material, but everything Disney. It should have been obvious how this would be portrayed by the very sophisticated people who favor gay rights. The Baptists have been portrayed as drooling, intolerant southern preachers of hate who are against Mickey Mouse, against Beauty and the Beast, against Hercules. Disney owns ESPN -- are people going to give up games on ESPN? Disney owns the major part of A&E -- are people going to stop watching Biography? Are people going to give up watching “Good Morning America” on ABC? As Talleyrand said about Napoleon’s assassination of the Duc D’Enghien in 1804, “It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder!” Such a boycott cannot work and will achieve nothing except to make opponents of gay rights look silly. It is a mistake that encourages the idea that we in the pro-family community are fanatics.
Instead, we should call on all people of conscience to boycott, for instance, all "R- rated movies or, what would be most effective, to watch less television and to see fewer movies in general.
The average American spends thirteen uninterrupted years of life watching television. Twenty-four-hour days, seven-day weeks, fifty-two-week years. It is too much. 5. That is the problem, and it is the wrong response to pick on Disney, which is disgusting and despicable, but is no more disgusting and despicable than Twentieth Century Fox, or Paramount, or Warner Brothers, or Sony. At least the Disney Company produces some family entertainment. What is the last wonderful family film you have seen from Fox? The boycotters are sending a message that somehow watching an R-rated Fox bloodbath is acceptable, but watching a G-rated Disney delight is not. We are asking people to consider a movie’s label -- whether it is a Disney film or not --rather than its substance. It is the wrong strategy at emphatically the wrong time.
What we need is to respond with the same kind of coordinated and self-conscious approach that people in the gay rights movement have used. They have emphasized desensitization and normalization, victimization of gay people, and demonizing their opponents. What we must do is to renormalize family life. The important message here, and it is crucially important, is one that Bill Bennett has talked about: we will get nowhere if this conflict is framed as people who are promoting homosexuality versus people who are opposed to homosexuality. Because then it is very difficult for those who oppose gay rights to make the case that we are anything other than hostile. We must not define ourselves as antigay, but as pro-marriage -- an essential distinction. Homosexuality is a threat to the family, to marriage, to the unique sanctity of one male and one female bound together in monogamous, eternal, and sanctified heterosexual union. That is an important standard to maintain.
But let us be clear, the main threats to the family in America do not come from the gay community. They come from infidelity, they come from divorce, they come from all of the temptations that heterosexuals fear and feel in a hedonistic culture. Our response should not be targeted specifically at homosexuals or homosexual issues. It should be targeted on the need to uplift and sanctify and defend the family and the institution of marriage.
In the second area -- victimization -- we have to show the victimization of the institution of the family. We have to show the way parents who are trying to defend the innocence of their children are being assaulted everywhere, not only in the media, but in the schools, by an increasingly hostile government, by advocacy groups who will tolerate every sort of freedom of speech except the freedom of speech which says that the institution of heterosexual monogamous marriage is uniquely valuable and uniquely important, and uniquely worth fighting for. We have to show how the family has been victimized, how it has been a victim of intolerance. 6. We should answer this approach of emphasizing gay victims, by showing these ordinary Americans--and there are literally millions of them--who have been victimized and harmed and reviled for their attempts to defend their own children and their own families and the institution of marriage.
The third area in their strategy, demonization, is one we should leave alone. We do not need to demonize any one. Our approach should include not demonization, but love, compassion, and accentuating the positive, not assaulting the people with whom we disagree. That is a temptation that people of conscience and people of faith in particular must resist.
Can we win this argument? We can, but more than that, we must. For the sake of our faith, for the sake of our families, for the sake of our civilization. Most of all, for the sake of our children and their grandchildren and their future.
Got a question? Ask Saint Peter
