“Gathering Storm” a turning point in the demise of the anti-gay movement?
activism, lgbt, media, politics, video 1 Comment »Frank Rich in yesterday’s NY Times seems to think so, where he guts the infamous NOM video “Gathering Storm” and explores the movement’s waning support in the face recent gay marriage victories in Iowa and Vermont.
Far from terrifying anyone, “Gathering Storm” has become, unsurprisingly, an Internet camp classic. On YouTube the original video must compete with countless homemade parodies it has inspired since first turning up some 10 days ago. None may top Stephen Colbert’s on Thursday night, in which lightning from “the homo storm” strikes an Arkansas teacher, turning him gay. A “New Jersey pastor” whose church has been “turned into an Abercrombie & Fitch” declares that he likes gay people, “but only as hilarious best friends in TV and movies.”
Yet easy to mock as “Gathering Storm” may be, it nonetheless bookmarks a historic turning point in the demise of America’s anti-gay movement.
What gives the ad its symbolic significance is not just that it’s idiotic but that its release was the only loud protest anywhere in America to the news that same-sex marriage had been legalized in Iowa and Vermont. If it advances any message, it’s mainly that homophobic activism is ever more depopulated and isolated as well as brain-dead.
And Rich closes with this zinger…
“It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.”
Read the full NY Times essay. And in case you missed Colbert’s hilarious take on “Gathering Storm…”
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