Kevin Marshall's America » gay rights

DC Comics’ “Iconic” Gay Character is Kind of but Not Really the Golden Age Version of a Hero on an Alternate Earth

kevinmarshall — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:46:57 +0000

Iconic? Yes, but not in the way many expected.

DC Comics made it official: the character they teased (shamelessly) as being gay under the new revamped “52” reboot is Green Lantern Alan Scott, who in the previous continuity was the Golden Age version of the Green Lantern character. In the New 52 continuity, he’s a character in the present that exists only on “Earth 2,” which is an alternate reality Earth that revamps but is not to be confused with “Earth-Two,” the old version of Earth where the Golden Age characters resided that was combined with Earth-One (DC’s primary Earth) in 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Got all that?

Probably not, unless you’ve been a comic fan for a long time. And that’s the problem.

Look, it’s great that they have a gay character. Actually, let me rephrase that: it’s about goddamn time somebody did it and acknowledged that it’s something that should be seen as acceptable in today’s society. But to tease that it’s going to be an iconic character and then make it an alternate version of a character living on an alternate Earth? To the mainstream casual observer, it’s going to look like a cop-out.

It speaks to the problem that DC and Marvel has when it comes to everything they do that’s related to the actual comics themselves: they cater to an older and shrinking base of fanboys that excludes a larger potential base. I personally don’t think their press release announcing the “iconic character” was written with the intent to deceive. No, the problem is that the guys in charge over there are fanboys themselves who seem to write and speak only in fanboy. You see it in the comics and you even see it in the press releases. To them, Alan Scott is an iconic character on par with Superman, Green Lantern, The Flash, and so on, and they don’t and won’t understand why the people they sent the press release to won’t understand or get it and they’ll scoff.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the concept of rebooting continuity with “The New 52″ to make it more accessible for new readers only to immediately start re-introducing the multiverse and alternate Earths that are and aren’t connected to previous versions of alternate Earths that were wiped out because things got too confusing and convoluted. Oy vey.

By the by, writer James Robinson says he won’t be the only gay character in Earth 2. Which is good, but – and this might be unfair but it’s a question that’s going to be asked – is Earth 2 going to be the dumping ground for gay heroes they’re not brave enough to put in their main titles?

Previously: Is DC Comics’ Approach to Unveiling a newly Gay Character the Right One?

The passing of a truly great American: Frank Kameny, 1925-2011

kevinmarshall — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 01:47:18 +0000

If homosexuality is still struggling for acceptance in modern society, it was verboten if not a capital crime in 1957. That was when Frank Kameny was fired from his job at the Army Map Service due to the discovery of an earlier arrest (resulting from entrapment) in a mens room. He fought back and became an early and continued leader for equal rights.

Closure wouldn’t come from the singular incident until June of 2009, when an openly gay man was appointed as the director of the Federal Civil Service. Kameny was invited to the swearing in ceremony, where in a prepared speech he was given a full apology and the promise of a better tomorrow.

But he did more than stand up once. He continued writing, advocating, and speaking right up until his passing last Tuesday.

From The New Republic:

The gay rights movement is widely considered to have begun with the Stonewall Riot of 1969, when, rather than succumb to police intimidation as they always had before, a group of patrons at a Greenwich Village gay bar fought back. “Stonewall” has become enshrined in American history as the Lexington and Concord of gay rights. But this reading of history gets it wrong. While Stonewall was indeed a seminal moment, the movement would never have found its footing had it not been for the tireless and courageous actions of Kameny, whose work began over a decade earlier. Essentially blacklisted, he devoted his life to the cause, never reconsidering the choice to do so because, as he told the Washington, D.C. gay magazine Metroweekly several years ago, “I’m right and they’re wrong.”

I am glad he lived long enough to see a nation apologize to him, New York pass marriage equality, and the United States military repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Frank Kameny was the greatest kind of American. To say he will be missed would be to provide a disservice to his efforts and the changes he ushered in.

Tell them, Frank.

Rick Santorum, gay soldiers, and sexy sex in the military

kevinmarshall — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 11:00:22 +0000

A small controversy erupted at the Fox News/Google GOP debate in Florida last week when a now openly gay soldier submitted a YouTube question to the panel.

“In 2010 when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was because I’m a gay soldier and I didn’t want to lose my job. My question is, under one of your Presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that’s been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?”

This was, notoriously, followed by a small portion of the live audience booing loudly with no small amount of derision and hostility.

What was more disconcerting to me, though, was Santorum’s response. Firstly, he did not acknowledge those very loud boos for an American soldier and did not chastise that very vocal group for their treatment of the man and his question, which for anyone with any semblance of decency should have been first and foremost on their agenda.

Instead, he began with this:

“I would say that any kind of sexual activity has no place in the military and the fact that they’re making it a point to include it as a provision and that we’re going to recognize a group of people and give them a special privilege to-and-deh-in removing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

The video, a little over two minutes in length, is below.

Okay, let’s back up.

Firstly, “any kind of sexual activity has no place in the military.” What exactly does this statement mean? What he wants to say is that sexual orientation has no place in the military. However, Santorum’s pathological bias against homosexuals can’t be hidden. He’s a guy that wears his feelings, and his insecurities, on his sleeve. Homosexuals are deviants. And they are a verb, not a noun, and that verb is a vile act.

The repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” provides soldiers with the ability to acknowledge that they are gay, particularly if they are confronted with it, without fear of retribution from superiors and peers in the military. Rick Santorum, however, seems to think that it means that not only will gay soldiers go around yelling about how gay they are all the damn time, but they’ll follow it up with “and now we will have butt sex in front of EVERYONE.”

I jest, but his phrasing is important because it betrays a very outdated and somewhat warped sense of what being a homosexual is: it’s not an orientation or who you are, but rather a fetish akin to someone who smells shoes or sucks toes. So for me, I wasn’t bothered by the booing, because it really was a small handful of cranks that were quickly shushed, and there were just as many others (if not more) in the audience that applauded the soldier for his question and his bravery. What I was and continue to be bothered and deeply concerned by is not only Santorum’s nervous, blustery bigotry, but the undue sensitivity granted to him and his archaic world view by pundits and the general public. The mainstream media took a small handful of anonymous, boorish crowd members to task, but not the Presidential hopeful who champions the rhetoric.

Rick Santorum complained last week about the search engine Google and how it wasn’t doing anything to eliminate the horrible and offensive search results that come up when you enter his name as a query. I was curious, so I entered his name myself. The second entry is to his Wikipedia page, but the first entry was to Spreading Santorum, a site that lists the new definition of “Santorum” provided by a reader of gay columnist Dan Savage in response to Santorum’s description of pedophilia in priests as a “homosexual relationship.” I felt and do feel for him, and honestly wish Savage had never done it. It’s imbecilic and childish, and only lends the man the appearance of being a victim himself.

It also distracts from what I assumed he meant when he complained about offensive search results: all the terrible things he’s said and believes about gay people.