FILM REVIEW: Bros

There has been a lot of discussion of the movie Bros in the last few weeks after its opening weekend box-office gross was below expectations and Hollywood basically labeled the film as a "flop." Writer and star of the film Billy Eichner said on social media that "straight people [...] didn't show up for Bros" and that it was "disappointing, but that's what it was." That tweet was later deleted but the audience reception to an explicitly gay rom-com that was released by a major Hollywood studio in movie theaters was bound to get a lot of tongues wagging and think pieces written and read. However, despite the historic nature of the release of Bros, in the end I think the main reason is that it's just not a very good movie, and that may be the reason why ore people didn't rush out to see it and make it a box-office success. (Right now it's still an open question of whether it will make a profit, but it seems very unlikely .)

To be more precise, I do think that there's a version of Bros which could have been a very good movie. The major flaw in Bros is the casting of Eichner as the lead character. Eichner plays Bobby, a somewhat neurotic podcast host and executive director of the inaugural National Museum of LGBTQ History. He is happy to go on Tinder and Grindr "dates" to hookup with other New York City gays.  Eventually he runs into Aaron (played by Luke MacFarlane), a hunky, handsome estate lawyer who hates his job and is also happy to "play the field." Eichner's Bobby spends a lot of his time yelling his (admittedly funny) lines to anyone within earshot, which includes his coworkers, his straight friends, Aaron, Aaron's mom and many more. The first problem with casting Eichner as the lead is that he doesn't have the dramatic chops to provide a nuanced portrayal of Bobby, so he comes across as a bitter queen. I think it is at least possible that a more nuanced actor could have played the role as written where Bobby is still annoying and acerbic but in a way that the audience could still root for him to succeed. I appreciate what Eichner was trying to do with Bros: create a gay rom-com without sanding over the rough (or unfamiliar to non-gay folks) edges of urban gay life to not scare off the straight people. But even as a gay man, I thought Bobby's character was A LOT and problematic in multiple ways. (He has a LOT of opinions on how gay people comport themselves which frankly would have seemed homophobic or demeaning if said by a straight character and even by the end of the movie it's not clear that his opinion about other gays has really changed that much.)

The second problem with casting Eichner as the lead is the resultant glaring lack of diversity in the two leads. In 2022 to think that a gay rom-com should have two gay white dudes as the lead is just hubris and tone deaf. (It stuns me that the coin-counters and pencil pushers at the studio thought this concept would be one that is worth spending $20-30 million on production and marketing. But then again, how much do you want to bet these fiduciary decisions were not being made by a diverse set of greenlighters at the studio?) Yes, the film (cleverly) tries to overcome this lack of diversity in the leads by adding cameos from gay icons as well as making Bobby's workplace a setting with a tapestry of the members of the LGBTQ rainbow. There's a butch lesbian, not one but two(!) transwomen of color, a bisexual and a Generation Z non-binary person who constantly streams their life online. But in now way are these characters are central to the story. The other notable bit of diverse casting in Bros was in an (actually pretty funny) hookup scene that Bobby has with a muscular, masculine Black guy after meeting him at the gym during a "straight-acting" phase. The hookup doesn't end well when Bobby's post-coital voice is an octave higher than his pre-coital one and this revelation that Bobby's butchness was a facade (unsurprisingly) freaks the Black guy out, but maybe not for the reason we might think at first. "Well, would you have hooked up with me if I had talked like this before?" Bobby asks, and the guy says, "Yeah, probably, because you're hot." "Thanks!" Bobby says. "But not now! Now you just seem weird!". On the way out Bobby notices a huge Barbra Streisand poster next to the door, which shows that even butch Black gay guys in New York City love their divas! Yay, intersectionality!

With all that said there are lots of good parts of Bros to like. There are fun cameos by gay icons like Harvey Fierstein (Torch Song Trilogy), Bowen Yang (Fire Island), and Debra Messing (Will and Grace) to name just a few. Aaron is very easy on the eyes to look at, and we see a LOT of him (and his well-sculpted body), as the film doesn't hesitate from depicting typical sexual situations gay men like Aaron and Bobby get into in an urban mecca like New York City (and Provincetown). That fact that almost gthe entire cast (even the straight roles) are played by well-known out LGBT actors is kinda cool. Also, the script is firmly committed to being a parody of Lifetime romantic comedies (this is a fun inside joke, because the actor who plays Aaron has been in more than a dozen of them) and these gags are well-executed. The film has interesting things to say about body image in gay men and how the trappings of (hyper)masculinity distort how gay men interact with each other in multiple social settings (from hookup apps to gyms to going out to even just walking down the street).

But in the end, although the audience is supposed to be rooting for Aaron and Bobby to get together, it's hard to make that sale because I, for one, didn't buy that the two are actually right for each other. Bobby has a LOT of internalized homophobia which comes out as extreme criticism of modern gay life and an reluctance/inability to commit. Aaron has the more interesting character arc as he makes changes to his life when the initial relationship between Aaron and Bobby doesn't work out because of both of their insecurities. (This is not a spoiler because of course in any rom-com the two star-crossed lovers don't live happily ever after after the first fling!) Another interesting twist on the rom-com is that the movie ends with the two just promising "to date each other for three month and re-assess" not a lifetime commitment (sic) and that gives the overall plot verisimilitude with these characters.

Overall, I agree with some of the reviews who say that even though Bros was not the historic achievement Bill Eichner wanted it to be, it is still a milestone in LGBT cinema that he should be proud of and I am glad it was made and exists in the media landscape. After all, for true equality, LGBTQ people need to have the right to have all sorts of media telling our stories, and some will be crappy and some will be sublime. (My primary complaint is that we still really haven't had a diverse LGBT film that connects with today's audiences.) The one thing Bros did do successfully is to bring us closer to the day where the future of LGBTQ representation in the media is not dependent on any single vehicle.

Title: Bros.
Director: Nicholas Stoller.
Running Time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.
MPAA Rating: Rated R for strong sexual content, language throughout and some drug use.
Release Date: September 30, 2022.
Viewing Date: October 3, 2022.

Writing: B+.
Acting: B.
Visuals: B-.
Impact: A-.

Overall Grade: B/B+ (3.16/4.0).

Star Rating:  ★★★½☆☆  (3.5/5.0).

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Patrick Bumatay Becomes First Openly LGBT Federal Appellate Court Judge

Openly gay, Filipino Patrick Bumatay, 41, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate by a 53-40 vote to a lifetime seat on the 9th U.S. Circuit Cort of Appeals. Bumatay is the first openly gay man to be appointed to the federal judiciary at the Circuit Court level (one rung below the U.S. Supreme Court) and is also the first Filipino to serve in that capacity. His nomination was opposed by both of California's U.S. Senators, Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein, which prior to the Trump administration would have doomed his candidacy. He was also opposed by basically every major LGBT and/or civil rights organization. He is Trump's 49 confirmed appointee to the circuit courts.

Fusion Adds Data To #GayMediaSoWhite Discussion

John Walker at the Fusion website analyzed the covers of the magazines of The Advocate, Out and Attitude and produced this useful infographic (seen above) to determine the (lack of) diversity represented therein.

The summary of the data is:

Representation on the cover of Out, June 2011 – May 2016In the past five years, Out has featured 78 people on the cover of its magazine. That figure includes repeat appearances by Dustin Lance Black, Ellen Page, Neil Patrick Harris, and Zachary Quinto. The mag’s upcoming May 2016 issue will feature Troye Sivan, a gay white singer-songwriter from Australia who rose to fame on YouTube.
Sixty-six of those 78 people have been white (85%), and 31 of those white people have been queer and/or trans (40%). Twelve of the 74 individuals featured on Out‘s covers have been people of color (15%), and eight of them have been queer people of color (10%).Representation on the cover of The Advocate, June 2011 – May 2016I was unable to locate cover imagery for the following six issues of The Advocate: September 2011, December 2011, January 2012, May 2012, June 2012, and July 2012. But of the covers I was able to find—excluding the publication’s more abstract, evocative cover art—at least 35 people have been featured on the cover of The Advocate over the past five years.At least 10 of those 35 individuals have been people of color (29%). At least eight of those 35 were queer and/or transgender people of color (23%). That includes the mag’s April/May 2016 cover star DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement who is currently running for mayor of Baltimore.Representation on the cover of Attitude, June 2011 – May 2016Attitude has featured 111 people on its covers in the past five years. That tally includes repeat appearances by Adam Lambert, Dan Osborne, Gareth Thomas, Greg Rutherford, Harry Judd, James Hill, Thom Evans, and Tom Daley.
One-hundred and six of those 111 have been men (95%). The remaining five were women (5%), all of whom were white. (This gender disparity isn’t as troubling as it could be, given that—unlike The Advocate and Out—Attitude is specifically marketed to gay men.) No trans or nonbinary people of any race or ethnicity have been featured on the cover of Attitude in that timeframe.

The overall data can be summarized with this final quote of the data analysis is:

By the way, of the 21 people who appeared on more than one of these magazine covers, we found that seven (33%) are straight white cisgender men. Two of the repeat cover stars are queer women (10%), Lady Gaga and Ellen Page. Just one (5%), Michael Sam—who has been seen on both Out and Attitude—is a person of color.

Discuss!

SATURDAY POLITICS: Openly Gay, Latino Ref Rodriguez Elected To Los Angeles School Board

Dr. Ref Rodriguez was just elected this week to fill the District 5 seats on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) board of education. He defeated incumbent Bennet Kayser by a surprisingly large margin of 7 points (53.5% to 46.5%). Rodriguez was endorsed by the Victory Fund, which supports only LGBT candidates for elected offices around the country.

Rodriguez is well-known for founding the Partnership to Uplift Communities Schools, commonly known as the PUC Schools, which run many charter schools in the state of California. The Rodiguez-Kayser battle was the most expensive of those contested on May 19th, with the California Charter School Association spending millions of dollars to defeat Kayser, who was aligned with the United Teachers Los Angles (UTLA), the teachers' union.

As KPCC put it:

As was the case in the primary, voter turnout was low as predicted: 7.64 percent of registered voters turned out in the school board election and 13.93 percent in City Council District 4. 

In the school board election, the low turnout gave special interests more influence in the results than had voters turned out in decent numbers. California Charter Schools Association Advocates' PACs spent over $2.2 million, primarily to support charter school administrator Ref Rodriguez. The teachers union, UTLA, spent about $1.3 million while calling on its 31,000-plus members to campaign for its favored candidates. 

The District 5 election got so fierce that I had people knocking on my door (twice) for Kayser even though I am not in District 5 (I'm in District 2 currently held by Monica Garcia).

Because of the ill-advised Charter Amendments that passed earlier this year, Rodriguez will serve a 5.5 year term, coming up for election in June 2020.

23-Year-Old Black Gay HIV+ Man Faces 60 Years In Prison After Being Found Guilty In Missouri

Michael Johnson is a 23-year-old Black gay man who was known on social media as "Tiger Mandingo" and was a champion college wrestler who allegedly had sex with multiple partners in Missouri without disclosing his HIV-positive status (which he knew about). Atleast one of those partners later tested positive for HIV and Johnson was found guilty of under Missouri's HIV criminalization statue this week of "recklessly infecting" a partner with HIV as well as "recklessly exposing a partner to HIV" and is subject to a punishment that could extend to life in prison.

The case, despite being a case of "he said, he said" was complicated by the fact that Johnson made as many as 30 videos of himself having unprotected oral and anal sex with partners, which since he was diagnosed by the state of Missouri as being HIV-positive on January 8, 2013 are evidence of illegal activity.

Buzzfeed notes:

Johnson was specifically charged on six counts: transmitting HIV to Lemons and to Charles Pfoutz through anal sex (both Class A felonies); one Class B felony for attempting to expose HIV to Montell Moore through anal sex without transmission; and three additional Class B felonies for exposing Christian Green, Filip Cukovic, and Andrew Tryon to HIV. Johnson was convicted on all counts, except the one involving Pfoutz, which was added by the prosecution just last month.  

All six of Johnson’s accusers testified that Johnson did not disclose his HIV status. Multiple medical professionals testified that they had informed Johnson of his status and advised him it was a felony to fail to disclose.

Johnson for his part testified that he had disclosed his HIV status to all six of his sexual partners before they had sex.

The case has become a cause celebre in Black gay circles, with a public letter to Johnson signed by 89 prominent Black gay men being circulated in response to the trial. Here's an excerpt:

HIV should be treated as a public health issue not as a criminal one. Legally requiring disclosure privileges the lives of White people not living with HIV over Black people who are living with HIV.
These laws feed into stereotypes that assume Black gay men are irresponsible and hypersexual. For you, your accusers saw your Black and masculine body as a site of ultimate sexual pleasure, until they had to deal with you as a whole person. At that moment you became a problem and were disposable to them.
HIV criminalization laws burden people living with HIV to take on the sole responsibility of sexual encounters. Regardless of intention or disclosure, there is a shared responsibility among sexual partners. Opening up about your HIV status is a personal decision that should not be mandated or enforced. Disclosing your HIV-status should be about self-reflection and speaking your truth. Disclosure should not be about protecting people who are not living with HIV from transmission. And disclosure should not be about punishing people living with HIV who do not disclose.
We do not care about whether or not you disclosed, or any intention you may or may not have had. We care about you—your life matters. HIV is not a crime and you should not be in prison.

What do you think?

Hat/tip to Fusion

Haters Propose Initiative To Regulate Where Gender Non-Conforming People Can Pee

Now that heterosexual supremacists and religious fundamentalists have realized they have lost the culture war completely on the question of marriage equality they are moving on to other issues, like "religious freedom" and protecting people who believe they have a constitutional right to deny services and public accommodations to other people due to their "sincerely held beliefs" about marriage. Oh and proposing ballot measures to require executions of homosexuals.

One of these issues the homophobic conservative right is pivoting to is about gender-nonconforming people and bathrooms. You think LGBT people are interested in the genitals of other people? We are nowhere as interested as the Pacific Justice Institute, which is so obsessed with the issue they want to have a multi-million dollar ballot campaign in the heat of a presidential campaign to discuss the politics and biology of sex and gender. What could go wrong, right?

They have filed the "Personal Privacy Protection Act" with the California Attorney General which would amend the California code to include the language:

 Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a person shall use facilities in accordance with their biological sex in all government buildings. 

So, yes, basically they want to make sure that only people with the "right" plumbing get to pee in the right places. Why do they care? Because they want to demonize people they do not like as predators.
This issue of gender-neutral bathrooms enrages (and befuddles) me because isn't it everyone's experience at home that all bathrooms can be used by all people of any gender? Why shouldn't that be the case in public? Why shouldn't ALL bathrooms be private? The idea of "group" bathrooms (i.e. urinals) is the atavistic notion that should be abolished, not the idea that people who and gender-nonconforming or transgender have to get the permission of the state to determine which bathroom to use in a public bathroom. That is insanity. They are convinced that sex is a binary despite all evidence to the contrary that not only is SEX not binary, neither is GENDER. However, they want to put into state law a definition of biological sex that reads:

 Biological sex means the biological condition of being male or female as determined at or near the time of birth or through medical examination or as modified by Health & Safety Code § 103425. 

But what happens if someone's sex is indeterminate (intersexuals) or someone's sex NOW is different from what their sex was determined to be "at or near the time of birth"? I guess no public bathroom for you, if the PPPA is passed by California voters.

One of the proponents of the measure named Kevin Snider is quoted in the Los Angeles Times claims that people who don't believe in the "biological reality of two sexes" are "science deniers." I would definitely put myself in the camp of many people who think there may be atleast five sexes! I think Mr. Snider needs to read up on the latest scientific research on the nature of sex and gender:

Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary — their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions — known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs) — often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD.

But, sure, let's have a conversation about which side is denying science and data. Spoiler alert, it is not going to be the group which thinks that sexual orientation can be changed by "therapy."

EYE CANDY: Kyle Goffney

Kyle Goffney is a 25-year-old model living in Los Angeles who is 6-feet tall and weighs 175 pounds, according to his ModelMayhem profile page. There he also discusses his racial background, claiming to be "3/4 African-American and 1/4 Thai." He has Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Kyle has been a Man Crush Model of the Day. I think you all can see why!

QUEER QUOTE: LGBT Groups Issue Statement On Michael Brown Killing

The fatal shooting of an unarmed 18-year-old Black man named Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri (just outside St. Louis) has been roiling the internets since it happened on Saturday August 9.

LGBT groups are often criticized by other progressive groups, especially African American civil rights organizations for a lack of reciprocity when it comes to coalition work but today comes word of a joint statement from numerous LGBT groups about the heinous Michael Brown killing:

When communities experience fear, harassment and brutality simply because of who they are or how they look, we are failing as a nation. In light of the recent events in Missouri, it is clearer than ever that there is something profoundly wrong in our country. The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community cannot be silent at this moment, because LGBT people come from all races, creeds, faiths and backgrounds, and because all movements of equality are deeply connected. We are all part of the fabric of this nation and the promise of liberty and justice for all is yet to be fulfilled. 

The LGBT community stands with the family of Michael Brown, who was gunned down in Ferguson, Missouri. We stand with the mothers and fathers of young Black men and women who fear for the safety of their children each time they leave their homes. We call on the national and local media to be responsible and steadfast in their coverage of this story and others like it--racialized killings that have marred this nation since the beginning of its history. We call on policy makers on all levels of American government not to shrink from action, and we are deeply grateful to Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice for their immediate commitment to a thorough investigation. At this moment, we are inspired by the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies … but the silence of our friends." 

ACLUCenter for Black Equity, Inc.Equality FederationGay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD)GMHCHuman Rights CampaignNational Black Justice CoalitionNational Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR)National Center for Transgender EqualityNational Gay and Lesbian Task ForceNational Minority AIDS CouncilNational Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA)PFLAG NationalPride at Work, AFL-CIOSoulforceSoutherners on New Ground (SONG)United AIDS

Good work!

Even while on vacation, President Barack Obama has also commented on the shooting, calling it "heartbreaking."

New Report On Progress In LGBTQ Immigration

A new report from Funders for LGBTQ Issues, titled Pathways Forward, has been released.
From the introduction:

For most of the twentieth century, anyone who openly identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) was banned from immigrating to the United States. HIV-positive people were also barred from entry. Until 2013, the immigration system denied recognition of LGBT families: the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prevented gay, lesbian, and bisexual U.S. citizens from sponsoring their same-sex partners for permanent residence. 

Slowly, over the past three decades, all of that has changed. The ban on LGBT people was repealed in 1990, and the ban on people living with HIV was lifted in 2008. In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Windsor decision overturned part of DOMA, recognizing the legitimacy of binational same-sex couples, ending years of separation and uncertainty for tens of thousands of couples.  

But the pathways to equality and basic quality of life is still hard for the vast majority of LGBT immigrants in the U.S., who now number an estimated 904,000. By comparison, New York State is home to 575,000 "out" LGBT adults. In fact, nearly a tenth of the nearly 9 million "out" LGBT adults are immigrants.

The full report is 24-pages long but is chock-full of important information like:

Funding for LGBTQ immigration issues has risen 20-fold from $146,000 in 2002 to over four million dollars in 2012.

As a former board member of Immigration Equality and an immigrant myself, this is good news!

QUEER QUOTE: NGLTF Acknowledges 50th Anniversary Of 1964 Cvil Rights Act

Last Wednesday, July 2 2014, was the 50th anniversary of the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, one of the key moments in the fight for equality in this country. Re Carey, the executive director of the National gay and Lesbian Task Force 9more commonly known as The Task Force) acknowledged the historical significance of the moment by sending out a press statement which is today's Queer Quote:

"Fifty years ago, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. It was the culmination of historic actions such as the March on Washington that we commemorated last summer. The landmark act was more than a legal remedy to the most appalling discrimination and inequality, it represented the hopes and dreams of millions of people who simply wanted to fulfill the promise of America. Today, we can celebrate significant progress, including important advances in recent days such as President Obama's upcoming executive orders to protect LGBTQ employees. But we still live in a world where racism permeates every aspect of our society; where a trans person of color can be turned away from the polling station because of their race and gender identity, where a Latino man can be profiled, stopped and frisked because of his race and presumed sexual orientation, and where millions of women — regardless of race — get paid less than their male counterparts. So, as we celebrate today, let¹s fight even harder for a tomorrow where everyone experiences true freedom and justice."

Good job, NGLTF!

QUEER QUOTE: NGLTF Condemns Sen. Rubio's Blocking Of Black Gay Federal Judge

Things that make you go hmmm. Huffington Post has confirmed that President Barack Obama has given up on pushing for William Thomas to become the first ever black, openly gay federal judge in our nation's history. Thomas was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida

MadProfessah has been following this curious story for quite some time. It has since became clear that U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was the primary impediment to Judge Thomas making history but for reasons that have not been made public.

Huffington Post reported:

Rubio has been single-handedly blocking Thomas for months, despite recommending him to Obama in 2012 as a nominee to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Rubio indicated in September he would not submit his "blue slip" to the Senate Judiciary Committee -- a courtesy, but not a hard rule, honored in the committee that allows a home-state senator to advance or hold up a nominee. Florida's other senator, Bill Nelson (D), submitted his blue slip months ago. 

[...] 

"Judge Thomas is a well-qualified jurist," Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) told HuffPost in the fall. "There is a serious underrepresentation of minorities on the bench and partisan obstructionism isn’t making it any better." 

Hastings is a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, which has railed against Rubio for blocking black judicial nominees at a time when the group says black judges make up about 8.3 percent of the federal judicial bench. In addition to Thomas, Rubio had been withholding his blue slip for another black judicial nominee, Brian Davis. But Rubio ultimately agreed to move forward with Davis, who has since been confirmed. 

“I am upset and concerned. Senator Marco Rubio himself said that Judge Thomas had passed all the tests, and then all of sudden for Senator Rubio to say Judge Thomas is not suitable is just not right," Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) said Tuesday. "I don’t know what more I can do to make Senator Rubio understand that what he is doing is wrong.”

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force issued a statement condemning the actions by Sen. Rubio in killing the Thomas nomination:

"We need more diversity in the federal judiciary, not less and it's disappointing that Judge William Thomas was not included among the nominees the White House submitted to the Senate this week. Judge Thomas is an eminently qualified jurist and, if confirmed, would have been the first openly gay black male to serve on the federal bench. Senator Marco Rubio's procedural maneuvering to stop this nominee was unacceptable and harmful given that the vacancy on the Southern District Court of Florida has been classified as a judicial emergency. Senator Rubio's actions are in no way helpful to the people of Florida."

Hopefully President Barack Obama will not have difficulty finding another openly gay Black man who could be nominated to a federal judgeship. This is a historical first that I would like to see completed.

Black Gay Author Named Grand Master of Science Fiction

Samuel R. Delany is a complicated man, someone who is accustomed to singular achievements. He is an openly gay, African-American man who while still a teenager married a white woman in 1961 (6 years before the Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage nationwide in Loving v. Virginia) and won two Nebula Awards for novels of speculative fiction in two consecutive years.

And now word comes that he has been named a Grand Master of Science Fiction by the SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the group that gives out the Nebula awards.

From the official announcement:

SFWA has named Samuel R. Delany, Jr. (1942– ) as the 2013 DAMON KNIGHT MEMORIAL GRAND MASTER for his contributions to the literature of Science Fiction and Fantasy. 

Samuel R. Delany is the author of numerous books of science fiction, including Nova, Dhalgren, Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand, and most recently Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. Two of his classic works of science fiction criticism, The Jewel-Hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine, have just been brought back into print by Wesleyan University Press, who will reissue a third, The American Shore, in the summer of 2014. 

After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2002. Since 2001 he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where for three years he was Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program. In 2010 he won the third J. Lloyd Eaton Lifetime Achievement Award in Science Fiction from the academic Eaton Science Fiction Conference at UCR Libraries. He is also a recipient of the William Whitehead Memorial Award for a lifetime’s contribution to lesbian and gay literature.

 Delany responded to the announcement of this prestigious honor with a statement:

This award astonishes me, humbles me, and I am honored by it. It recalls to me–with the awareness of mortality age ushers up–the extraordinary writers who did not live to receive it: Roger Zelazny, Joanna Russ, Thomas M. Disch, Octavia E. Butler–as well, from the generation before me, Katherine MacLean, very much alive. I accept the award for them, too: they are the stellar practitioners without whom my own work, dim enough, would have been still dimmer.

As a fan of speculative fiction I remember discovering that Samuel Delany was Black and being very pleased that someone who shares an identity characteristic had made significant contributions to a field I am very interested in. I was blown away when I discovered that he is gay (and pretty freaky). Even though his style of science fiction is simply not my cup of tea, it is widely recognized as being stylistically superior. It's quite interesting that the two primary African Americans to be recognized for their work in speculative fiction, Delany and the late, great Octavia Butler (who I knew personally!) were both Black and Gay, like myself. These facts warm my heart.

I'm very psyched to see that Delany is being recognized with this honor.

Hat/tip to Whatever.

Sen. Rubio (R-FL) Blocks Black Gay Federal Judicial Nominee

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has proven repeatedly that he is not a friend to the LGBT community but this latest action takes things to a new level. Previously, Rubio had been thought to only be delaying his approval for U.S. district court nominee Bill Thomas but now comes word that Rubio is blocking President Obama's nomination of the very first openly gay, Black man to the federal judiciary, a historic first. Generally, both United States Senators have to agree on nominees for any federal judgeship in their state, and Thomas is nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

The Advocate reports that Rubio has withdrawn his support for the Thomas nomination:

Rubio, a Republican, announced Monday that he would no longer support the nomination of Miami-Dade circuit judge William Thomas to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, citing concerns about Thomas’s rulings in two criminal cases, The New York Times reports. Nominees for federal judgeships need the support of both U.S. senators from their home state in order for the confirmation process to continue. Florida’s other senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, has endorsed Thomas, who would be the nation’s first openly gay African-American federal judge. 

[...] 

Yolanda Strader, president of a Miami association for black lawyers, accused Rubio of playing politics with Thomas’s nomination. “As much as I would like to think that politics has nothing to do with this, it looks as if it does,” Strader told the Times. “It would be unfair to prevent a well-qualified judicial nominee from proceeding with the nomination process because he is an openly gay black male.” Her group is initiating a social media campaign in support of Thomas and may start an online petition to move his nomination forward.

This is pretty heartbreaking as it comes on the heels of the news that the United States Senate had unanimously approved the first openly gay man to a federal appellate judgeship on Tuesday. Hopefully President Obama will find another openly gay Black man to be nominated for a federal judgeship soon as he continues his campaign of diversifying the federal judiciary.

Hat/tip to The Advocate

White Gay Rapper F. Virtue Disses Homophobia In "Anita Bryant"

Rapper F. Virtue's song "Anita Bryant" is not your typical rap song, nor is F. Virtue you're usual rapper. He's white and openly gay. Apparently, he's also Canadian, 23 years old and a college graduate. How many of these descriptors does one usually associate with the word "rapper"? Anyway, check out the song for yourself below!


Now if you were in my class, we would have a discussion about intersectionality (how multiple aspects of one's identity can be combined). Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section!

Hat/tip to Upworthiest

DEBATE: Is There Racism In Online Gay Dating?

There is an interesting discussion going on about whether (and how) racism plays a role in online dating by gay men. With the proliferation of electronic means by which gay men can find each other (websites, cellphone apps) the many ways by which men desire broadcast to each other has become clearer, easier to scrutinize, and in some cases, problematic.

On some dating sites, one can search for "dating" partners (and  I use the word "dating" liberally, because what we are really talking about is "hooking up") using various features or physical characteristics of the desired partner. Sometimes one of those features to be searched on is the race of the person you are looking to "date." (Other features are age, height, weight, et ceteraThe primary question for debate is whether it is racist to communicate a racial preference in your desired partner. For example, some people who identify themselves as one particular race may seek to only "date" within that same racial group, explicitly saying they are only looking for that group, or conversely saying that they are not looking for partners from all other racial groups. There are also situations where people who identify with one race only seeks to date from another, different racial group. Is that more or less problematic than the first scenario? In other words, should expressing an intraracial dating preference be considered differently than expressing an interracial dating preference? Or is  excluding consideration of any particular race prima facie evidence of racial animus by definition?

My position is that it is racist to specifically exclude all members of a particular race from consideration as a sex partner or potential date. One must first always remember that racial categories are fictions, problematic figments of the imagination which are used to classify groups of people in order to reify a system of dominance and subordination. Just because race is a social construct, however, does not mean that it is not "real" and that being classified by racial categories does not have real and quantifiable impacts on real people's lives. So, coming from the perspective that race brings with it a maelstrom of conflicting and confusing forces and ideas allows me to say that yes, it is racist to specifically select or exclude partners by race. (To be clear, the definition of racism I am using is this one: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.) By eliminating all members of a particular race from being a potential partner means that you are buying into the belief that race is "a primary determinant" of desirability. Additionally, because of the slippery nature of race there are no traits or features that are indisputably aligned with one race or another, so that to make a categorical statement about people of a certain race is almost by definition, racist in of itself.

Clearly, lots of people disagree with my position that racial preference in selecting sexual or dating partners is racist. However, there are also lots of people who agree with me that this behavior can appear pretty icky.

Rick Mula, writing at The Task Force's blog, provides some data to demonstrate that racial categories do appear to impact how gay men select partners:

Based on data published by OkTrends, a blog produced by OkCupid, white gay men respond more often to OkCupid messages from other white men than from men of color. They respond to messages from other white men 44% of the time but respond only 37.3% of the time to men of color. 

White gay men also respond less frequently to messages in general than gay men of color. On OkCupid white gay men respond to messages from all races at an average rate of 41.4%, but gay men of color respond to messages from all races at an average rate of 49.3%. 

Ironically, even though white gay men respond to messages in general less frequently than gay men of color they fail to attract the highest rate of responses to the messages they send. Middle Eastern gay men, on average, will receive about 48 responses for every 100 messages they send, while white gay men will receive an average of 45. By contrast, Black gay men will receive about 36.

This data demonstrates the reality that gay men have racial preferences when selecting partners or dates. This is not a surprise, and has been defended in print:

If you enjoyed and would date all races but had a special thing for lean latino boys, does that extra crush of yours make you racist? If you are an Asian boy and have that “boi” gene in you that has you searching out bigger, older white men does that make you a racist? If you think mixed raced boys are particularly sexy then does that make you especially open-minded or again, a racist? While many would weigh their answer to each question with special thought and care, I personally blanket-answer “Nope!” to all of em’! I’m quite a black or white (forgive the pun) kind of guy when it comes to most issues and unless you think people are genetically/socially/anyway unequal because of their race then I’ll stamp you with a big ol’ R for racist, but being more turned on by a particular set of men to me is totally acceptable and pretty much exactly how we are made to cruise/date/love.

Also at the Homorazzi blog where this defense of racial preference occurs, there is a survey (with nearly 500 responses) that indicates that more than 60% of respondents felt that racial preference is not racism.

This is a complicated topic but I think it is useful to think about the issues and hopefully have  a reasonable and reasoned debate.

What do you think?

Godless Wednesday: Young Godless Liberal Democrats Are Cool!

Hemant Mehta over at Friendly Atheist looked more closely at the recent Gallup poll about marriage equality that I blogged about yesterday and noticed that he is a member of all of the top five groups which strongly support marriage equality: Liberals (77%), "No religion" (76%), Democrats (70%), 18-34 years old (69%) and Rarely/Never attend church (67%). These are all well-above the level of support given by all American adults to marriage equality: 52%.

Since this is a Godless Wednesday® post I must also point out that the groups most opposed to marriage equality are 55 and older (58% opposed), Protestants (58% opposed), Republicans (66% opposed), Conservatives (67% opposed) and attend church weekly (73% opposed).

I think this explains why House Republicans (who as a group are widely oversampled in at least 3 of these groups) were willing to blow millions of tax payer money on defending DOMA all the way to the Supreme Court and are so virulently opposed to marriage equality.

Saturday Politics: LGBT Equality and Immigration Reform

As readers of this blog know, I am myself a gay immigrant (now a naturalized citizen of the United States). So, I am following the discussions and politics around comprehensive immigration reform quite closely. One of the most important issues to me (and many other people) is how immigration reform will deal with the plight of same-sex binational couples. Under current law, there is no way for a U.S. citizen or permanent resident to sponsor their foreign-born spouse or partner to remain in the United States permanently. Partly this is is due to the fact that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prohibits the federal government from providing any federal right or benefit to legally same-sex married couples, but it also is a result of Congress' inaction to fix this injustice towards same-sex couples. (It should be noted that there are 18 countries who allow their citizens to sponsor a foreign-born same-sex partner to remain with them permanently, and several of these countries do not recognize same-sex marriage.)

Of course, generally the  people who hate the LGBT community and oppose any establishment or strengthening protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (i.e. heterosexual supremacists) are also generally the same people who hate immigrants as well (i.e. xenophobes and oftentimes nativist racists), although these two sets of people are not completely overlapping. (Not all homophobes are xenophobic and not all racist xenophobes are anti-gay. However, a significant fraction of the Republican Congressmembers are both anti-gay and anti-immigrant)

The current draft comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate (often referred to as the Gang of Eight's CIR bill) does not include a provision helping same-sex binational couples, although the President's immigration blueprint of reform principles does.

So there is an intriguing political question of what will happen when the political desires of the LGBT community to be included in CIR collides with the Republican xenophobia and homophobia? The Go8 CITR bill is being marked up in the Senate Judiciary Committee next week and the Democrats are expected to offer an amendment that includes the entire text of the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA) that would solve the same-sex binational couples' issue by creating a new class of visa for sponsorship of "permanent partners" for those who can not get married and sponsor their spouse for a permanent resident visa.

The Republicans involved in immigration reform have been repeatedly saying that including "social issues" like LGBT equality will derail any chances of comprehensive immigration reform. Cue the New York Times:

Now, with the immigration bill scheduled to advance next week toward a vote in the Judiciary Committee, Democrats are in a quandary about whether to offer an amendment that would give green cards to same-sex partners. 

Republican sponsors of the overhaul warned on Tuesday that such an amendment would sink the entire measure.  

“There’s a reason this language wasn’t included in the Gang of Eight’s bill: It’s a deal-breaker for most Republicans,” Senator Flake said. “Finding consensus on immigration legislation is tough enough without opening the bill up to social issues.” 

Under existing immigration law, it is generally a quick and straightforward process when an American citizen seeks a green card for a foreign-born spouse in a traditional marriage. 

But under a 1996 federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, Americans cannot apply for green cards for foreign spouses of the same sex. In addition, the immigration code does not recognize same-sex partners.

Interestingly, a number of LGBT groups pushed back hard this week on the notion that including same-sex couples in comprehensive immigration reform would weaken the bill:

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, issued a statement late Wednesday saying Congress must pass an immigration bill that includes gay couples and the notion that their addition would block the legislation from passing is an “offensive ruse.”

“This bluster is nothing more than a political maneuver designed to divide the pro-reform coalition and at the same time appease a small but vocal group of social conservatives that will do anything to stop progress for lesbian and gay couples,” Griffin said. “The LGBT community will not stand for Congress placing the blame of their own dysfunction on our shoulders.”

Another joint statement earlier in the day from a quintet of LGBT organizations — the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, United We Dream and Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project — expressed a similar sentiment.

“We do not believe that our friends in the evangelical faith community or conservative Republicans would allow the entire immigration reform bill to fail simply because it affords 28,500 same-sex couples equal immigration rights,” the organizations state. “This take-it-or-leave-it stance with regard to same-sex bi-national couples is not helpful when we all share the same goal of passing comprehensive immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship.”

Both of these statements emphasize that LGBT groups support passage of comprehensive immigration reform and take note of an estimate from the Williams Institute that 267,000 of the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are LGBT.

This is a tough one. There are roughly 9 times as many LGBT immigrants who will be positively impacted by comprehensive immigration reform as who will be negatively impacted by a CIR bill that does not include UAFA. I am fan of the Williams Institute, but their estimate that less than 2.5% of all undocumented immigrants are LGBT seems woefully low to me. The only reason to keep UAFA out of CIR is to placate Republican's homophobia while the Republicans are presumably playing down their own xenophobia. Would you agree to a sexist compromise on a racist bill? When multiple identities combine and compete against each other, usually everyone loses.

However, a significant part of this issue may be resolved after June 27th if the Supreme Court (as expected) strikes down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and the Obama administration starts issuing permanent resident visas (i.e. green cards) to legally married same-sex couples. It's unlikely CIR will have become law by then so Senate Democrats should move forward with including UAFA now and wait and see if DOMA is still valid law when they make their final vote on the bill.

President Obama himself (finally!) weighed in on this issue, saying while in Costa Rica yesterday that he supports inclusion of LGBT couples in immigration reform. The Miami Times reports:

 President Barack Obama says he supports recognizing gay unions in a broad immigration bill pending in Congress but won't say whether he would sign legislation that fails to do so.

Obama says that recognizing same-sex relationships in the bill is "the right thing to do." But he says it would be premature to telegraph what he will or won't do before lawmakers send him a bill.

Gay rights supporters are pushing for an amendment to the bill to allow gays to sponsor their partners to come to the U.S.

But Republicans, including some who helped draft the bill, have made it clear that amending the legislation in that fashion would cost their support.

I say call the Republicans bluff. There are over 800 pages in the bill which will impact 11 million undocumented immigrants and hundreds of billions of dollars and they are going to blow it up because the bill will allow same-sex binational couples to remain families?

Really? Bring it on.

Queer Quote: Jerame Davis on LCR's Romney Pick

Here is another on-the-record quote from Jerame Davis, executive director of the National Stonewall Democrats on the announcement that Log Cabin Republicans have endorsed Mitt Romney for President:

"This endorsement was not principled in any way - how could it be when it excuses some of the most radical anti-LGBT positions in presidential history? Log Cabin's endorsement of Romney actually does harm to anyone they can claim to represent. It's really quite tragic. 

"I wouldn't advocate for Log Cabin Republicans to be shouting from Dupont Circle that Mitt Romney is a homophobe - that's not their job. But I would advocate for them to hold their Party and their candidates accountable by not rewarding damaging behavior and not making a mockery of what it means to be labeled a LGBT organization."

Some people would say that perhaps the head of the "gay Democrat" group would be the worst person to quote in response to any action by the "gay Republican" group, but I disagree. The two are mirror images of each other, and if anyone knows the pressure of balancing partisan versus LGBT instincts it would be someone like Jerame Davis who faces the exact same pressures. The point here is that R. Clarke Cooper, the head of the Log Cabin Republicans put partisanship above LGBT equality, and that is reprehensible.

Map of Status of Gay Rights in Africa

Joe.My.God links to this interesting map about the state of the law towards homosexuality throughout Africa, provided by ILGA.

Interestingly, friend of MadProfessah.com, Rod McCollum is currently in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for an international AIDS conference and is posting some amazing first person reports of his trip on his blog, Rod 2.0. Check it out!

STUDY: Racial Disparities In Perceived Racial Progress Revealed!

There is an interesting new study ("Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing,” Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers, Perspectives on Psychological Science, May 2011) which compares how "Black" Americans and "White" Americans perceive racial progress of the last few decades in America. The Wall Street Journal (!) reported a summary of the results:

The researchers contacted a random national sample of 209 whites and 208 blacks, and asked them how much discrimination each group faced, on a scale of one to ten, for each decade since the 1950s.

Black Americans saw anti-black bias as declining steadily, from 9.7 in the ’50s to 6.1 in the ’00s. Over the same period, they perceived a small increase in anti-white bias, from 1.4 to 1.8.

White Americans saw an even steeper decline in anti-black bias: from 9.1, in the ’50s, to 3.6, in the ’00s. But more striking, according to the researchers, was the sharp increase in perceived anti-white bias: Among whites, it shot up from 1.8 to 4.7.

White Americans, in short, thought that anti-white bias was a greater societal problem by the ’00s than anti-black bias.

The researchers described the pattern—which did not vary markedly with regard to age or education levels—as evidence that white Americans see race relations as a zero-sum game, in which one group’s gains must be offset by another’s loss.

My friend, Professor Ange-Marie Hancock of the USC Political Science department, would call this an example of Leapfrog Paranoia, which is the mistaken belief by one group that they are going to be surpassed in status by another group which they previously had perceived to be their inferior. Leapfrog paranoia generally leads to or is coupled with Movement backlash which is where the movement for progress by the inferior group experiences backlash as the currently superior group portrays itself as the victim precisely because there has been progress by the previously (and currently) inferior group. One obvious example of this is fundamentalist Christians saying that "militant homosexual activists" are persecuting them for their beliefs and forms of worship when LGBT activists are asking for equal access to civil liberties and civil rights without discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the public sphere.