Eleven-year-old Will Phillips, who last year refused to stand up in class for the Pledge of Allegiance until there was “liberty and justice for all,” received a GLAAD Media Award for his activism on behalf of the gay community. In his acceptance speech he called for President Obama to use the bully pulpit of his office to affect change. Amazing stuff. Watch:
In a profanity filled tirade in NYC this week, Mickey Rourke lamented the use of the f-word… faggot that is. Warning, NSFW at all…
Pathetic human being. Can I have my money back for the Wrestler? I don’t care how much I enjoyed it. And we soon have to suffer him in the new Iron Man movie.
President Jarrett Barrios of GLAAD was swift to respond…
“This is a slur that, regardless of what Mickey Rourke has convinced himself that it means, is often the last word that gay people, and gay youth in particular, hear before they’re bullied, harassed or assaulted.
Rourke is showing himself to be painfully ignorant of how this vulgar, abusive slur feeds a climate of anti-gay hatred, intolerance and violence. Rourke either needs to figure this out, or media needs to stop giving him a platform for promoting these kinds of slurs.”
Rourke also received a lot of negative press last November when he threatened to break a “faggot” writer’s legs.
The SyFy Channel (formerly Sci-Fi) responded to GLAAD’s Network Responsibility Index which gave the network a failing grade, promising to try harder to increase diversity in its original programming.
A GLAAD rep told TVGuide.com that Syfy’s grade was based on the fact that there were only two gay characters appearing on the network’s programming during the timetable of the study — Eureka‘s Vincent and Battlestar Galactica‘s Gaeta — and the latter’s sexual orientation was never directly addressed on the show. Instead, it was only referred to in a webisode.
Looking ahead, however, Syfy’s [executive vice-president] Stern touts two new series and the diversity depicted within.
“On Stargate Universe, one of the main female characters, we discover, is a lesbian and has a wife at home. It’s a pretty important facet of who that character is,” he says. ER alum Ming-Na plays intergalactic diplomat Camille Wray, while 24‘s Reiko Aylesworth recurs as her wife.
Similarly the Galactica prequel spin-off Caprica has at least two main characters depicted as being in gay relationships. “[One] is a ‘goodfella’-type, and we discover in a nonchalant way that he is gay, with a husband,” Stern says. “It was very interesting to me to take what is traditionally a very heterosexual role in an organization that we think of as being extremely homophobic, and put a gay character in that world in a very normalized way.”
NBC, CBS, A&E and TBS also received failing grades for lack of diversity but have refused to comment. HBO and Showtime received the highest ratings.
As a longtime science fiction geek, it will be good to see more of us represented in the Final Frontier. J.J. Abrams, are you listening?
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Granted it’s a comedy show by some crude and talent-impaired shock jocks (and one semi-reasonable jockette), but give me a break. It’s dehumanizing talk like this that nudges someone to act out and hurt someone. Listen to audio from the Rob, Arnie and Dawn Show if you can stomach it. Discussion starts around the 4:45 mark.
It’s easy to forget sometimes living here in this bubble called San Francisco that we are just an hour or two away from such intense prejudice and intolerance. Oh wait a minute, Michael Savage broadcasts from San Francisco. So much for that theory.
GLAAD has now called for an apology from the show.