Episode 4: A New Hope for Gay UD Threads?

[disneyboy20022]

There's a guy who works for AMC Theaters named John Campea and is on a YouTube talk show known as AMC Movie Talk and discusses this new movie
coming starring Keira Knightley and Benedict Cumberbatch called The Imitation Game. In this video John Campea gives this incredible speech that I just had to post here because it is relevant to this subject matter of this thread.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ud-Asrpdls[/youtube]

[my chicken is infected]

I think even if I weren't gay, I'd want to leave this town. There's just sooooooooo little here for me. I have a lot of baggage here. I'd like to just go somewhere where only a few people know me and I can just feel free to be more of who I am - all the parts of me, not just the gay part - and find people to be around who will love me for who I am. Added bonus will be that I'll be too far away from the family members that piss me off to be able to be around them very often.

[Elladorine]

disneyprincess11 posted this in the Disney's Good Luck, Charlie to Say Goodbye thread, and I thought it was worth reposting here.

Exclusive: Disney Channel Breaks New Ground with Good Luck Charlie Episode ~Basically, there's going to be an episode featuring a family with two moms, which will air in early 2014. Let's see how the public reacts.

[Dr Frankenollie]

I'm surprised *this* has yet to be mentioned:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/2 ... 70911.html

[disneyboy20022]

I saw this on America's Got Talent and thought it was relevant for this thread. The story of how his parents kicked him out because he's gay just sickens me.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpeAnjyeUUQ[/youtube]

All the judges were amazing during this.

[Flanger-Hanger]

I'm surprised *this* has yet to be mentioned:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/2 ... 70911.html

I was too lazy to make a post about it.

On a different note there should be a decision released regarding the Prop 8 and DOMA cases within the next few days.

[Disney's Divinity]

Yeah, for some reason I’m not expecting anything positive with that, although I’d be very happy to be proven wrong.

I also read that the American Medical Association lifted the ban on gays donating blood or some such (I saw it as a news line when I happened to be watching LOGO yesterday). I find that strange, because…how would they know who’s gay unless they were told so truthfully…? I know I’ve donated blood several times in the past.

[UmbrellaFish]

I also read that the American Medical Association lifted the ban on gays donating blood or some such (I saw it as a news line when I happened to be watching LOGO yesterday). I find that strange, because…how would they know who’s gay unless they were told so truthfully…? I know I’ve donated blood several times in the past.

I know that policy was born out of the AIDS crisis, but I've always wondered how it could have remained in effect for so long since, considering how long we've know that AIDS is not a gay disease.

[UmbrellaFish]

It's a big day for gays in the states.

[DC Fan]

A question for you guys.

How do you feel about the way gays are portrayed in movies/TV?

I´ve seen several and read the plot for most. And even to this day I keep finding that you can count with the fingers in your hands how many have not just normal guys that no one would have known they´re gay or good looking ones.

Most of the times the stories the protagonist is a teenager or very skinny.

The only one I´ve seen that they did used a handsome and normal guy was Eating Out 2.

[Flanger-Hanger]

It's a big day for gays in the states.

It is indeed, DOMA struck down as a violation of the 5th ammendment and Prop 8 proponents were told they have no standing to defend the law in federal courts.

I'm not sure when marriages can start in California again, but having DOMA struck down should solve the issue for bi-national couples, allow for federal benefits and recognition and make for an easier repeal of state marriage bans.

[disneyboy20022]

One of the pastors at my church just posted this link on facebook and it isn't at all bashing the gays, it says that we as Christians need to change our thinking on marriage.

http://www.russellmoore.com/2013/06/26/ ... bject_map=

Here's an excerpt from it

This gives Christian churches the opportunity to do what Jesus called us to do with our marriages in the first place: to serve as a light in a dark place. Permanent, stable marriages with families with both a mother and a father may well make us seem freakish in 21st-century culture. But is there anything more “freakish” than a crucified cosmic ruler? Is there anything more “freakish” than a gospel that can forgive rebels like us and make us sons and daughters? Let’s embrace the freakishness, and crucify our illusions of a moral majority.

That means that we must repent of our pathetic marriage cultures within the church. For too long, we’ve refused to discipline a divorce culture that has ravaged our cultures. For too long, we’ve quieted our voices on the biblical witness of the distinctive missions of fathers and mothers in favor of generic messages on “parenting.”

For too long, we’ve acted as though the officers of Christ’s church were Justices of the Peace, marrying people who have no accountability to the church, and in many cases were forbidden by Scripture to marry. Just because we don’t have two brides or two grooms in front of us, that doesn’t mean we’ve been holding to biblical marriage.

The dangerous winds of religious liberty suppression means that our nominal Bible Belt marrying parson ways are over. Good riddance. This means we have the opportunity, by God’s grace, to take marriage as seriously as the gospel does, in a way that prompts the culture around us to ask why.

The increased attention to the question of marriage also gives us the opportunity to love our gay and lesbian neighbors as Jesus does. Some will capitulate on a Christian sexual ethic. There are always those professional “dissidents” who make a living espousing mainline Protestant shibboleths to an evangelical market. But the church will stand, and that means the gospel Jesus has handed down through the millennia. As we stand with conviction, we don’t look at our gay and lesbian neighbors as our enemies. They are not.

The gay and lesbian people in your community aren’t part of some global “Gay Agenda” conspiracy. They aren’t super-villains in some cartoon. They are, like all of us, seeking a way that seems right to them. If we believe marriage is as resilient as Jesus says it is (Mk. 10:6-9), it cannot be eradicated by a vote of justices or a vote of a state legislature. Some will be disappointed by what they thought would answer their quest for meaning. Will our churches be ready to answer?

This also means we must change the way we preach. Those with same-sex attractions, who follow Christ, will be walking away from what their families and friends want for them: wedding cake and married life and the American Dream. Following Jesus will mean taking up a cross and following a hard narrow way. It always does.

If we’re going to preach that sort of gospel, we must make it clear that this cross-bearing self-denial isn’t just for homosexually-tempted Christians. It is for all of us, because that’s what the gospel is. If your church has been preaching the American Dream, with eternal life at the end and Jesus as the means you use to get all that, you don’t have a gospel that can reach your gay and lesbian neighbors—or anyone else for that matter.

Same-sex marriage is headed for your community. This is no time for fear or outrage or politicizing. It’s a time for forgiven sinners, like us, to do what the people of Christ have always done. It’s time for us to point beyond our family values and our culture wars to the cross of Christ as we say: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

[PatrickvD]

A question for you guys.

How do you feel about the way gays are portrayed in movies/TV?

I´ve seen several and read the plot for most. And even to this day I keep finding that you can count with the fingers in your hands how many have not just normal guys that no one would have known they´re gay or good looking ones.

Most of the times the stories the protagonist is a teenager or very skinny.

The only one I´ve seen that they did used a handsome and normal guy was Eating Out 2.

Weekend has two very handsome guys. I'm sure there are more. But I'd have to go through my library. My main issue is more with the fact that the stories all centre around coming out and often bad endings.

[ProfessorRatigan]

Yes, the Supreme Court ruling is a big deal, BUT, we still have a LOT of work ahead of us. States that are anti-gay (aka. the VAST MAJORITY of them) will still refuse to recognize same-sex marriages. This ruling is just saying DOMA is unconstitutional, which means the federal government will have to recognize them. The states will be unaffected for the time being.

[Disney's Divinity]

I kind of had a feeling that yesterday would be a good day, considering it was the anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas, which seemed like too much of a coincidence. It would be nice if we could just get to the part where gay marriage is made legal across all states federally, but still very happy DOMA was struck down and people can marry in California and 11+ other states.

As for gays in TV/movies, I agree with PatrickvD that my least favorite part is most of the time gay characters often do not have happy endings like heterosexual characters. Either they are completely neutralized into a non-threatening sassy, de-sexualized gay role (no boyfriend or sex present) or else they die at the end, never meet anyone like all the other the characters do, or some other tragic/depressing ending. Older gays are rarely portrayed either, and most gay characters and gay relationships portrayed follow the stereotypes. And it seems like a lot of TV villains are still coded as gay. (In saying all this, I’m excluding gay films, because they are geared specifically for the gay community and usually aren’t seen by a wider audience, although many of these problems are present in these films, too).

[Dr Frankenollie]

A wonderful film about a closeted gay teenager:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM9G1z6bp70[/youtube]

It's somewhat comic at times, and the protagonist is written as being fine with his homosexuality (it's everyone else who has the problem). Set in the early 1990s and based on a play, it's written with a backdrop of the UK's homophobic Section 28 legislation in mind.

[PatrickvD]

While I always liked Get Real, I don't love it. At least, not nearly as much as most people.

Maybe it's the intense sadness I feel for the character of John. And I still feel the concept of the jock falling for the geek is a bit of an unrealistic fantasy.

Beautiful Thing to which Get Real is often compared to, will always be the better film in my opinion. The ending is so great.

[Dr Frankenollie]

Maybe it's the intense sadness I feel for the character of John. And I still feel the concept of the jock falling for the geek is a bit of an unrealistic fantasy.

If you object to the lack of realism in the jock/geek relationship, why object to the realism in the fact that someone like John rejects his feelings and his love? It's unfortunate and upsetting, yet has happened and continues to happen.

I have yet to see Beautiful Thing.



On an unrelated note: here is a clip from an Oxford Union debate on whether gay couples should adopt children, held in January 2013.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w6yi_k4eTk[/youtube]

I think this woman will be doing wonders for Gay Rights.

[ajmrowland]

Disgusting. And she also jumps completely over the probability of surrogates.

[Dr Frankenollie]

Disgusting. And she also jumps completely over the probability of surrogates.

On the plus side, so to speak, almost everyone there clearly thought her views were vile.


Just for fun, and because I didn't find anything like this when quickly trawling through this thread's previous pages, let's discuss coming out stories!

Before I approached the wearisome toils of being a teenager, I had the occasional odd feeling which, in retrospect, may have been signs of burgeoning homosexuality, or perhaps mere indigestion. Like when I was about out 7 or 8 years old, and had a brief play-fight with a boy my age, or when I became particularly attached to an old He-Man action figure. The point at which I recognised I was most certainly gay was in watching episodes of Smallville at 13, and seeing Clark Kent regularly get his shirt off. And at that point, I was becoming somewhat attracted to boys in school too. Of course, statistically speaking, virtually all would be heterosexual, and it seemed (foreshadowing!) that all were. Besides, I was incredibly socially awkward and somewhat lonely, with all the self-esteem George W Bush ought to have. Unsurprisingly then, I tried to become used to the fact that while I would fantasise about such boys, they would be eternally unattainable.

One boy I liked in particular was one I became infatuated with for more than merely shallow reasons; he was, relatively speaking, gorgeous, yet he was also intelligent, knowledgeable, witty, with interests in religion, politics and ethics. He was in the year above me, so I saw him rarely, but I had previously enjoyed the occasional conversation with him, through some happy occurrence or another. As my infatuation grew, as did my information about him. He was openly gay. So, from my perspective, this was bloody Christmas and my birthday together. Even then, I enjoyed talking about religion and philosophy, and the prospect of doing it with a good-looking boy who had the possibility of reciprocating my feelings seemed far, far too good to be true. Nevertheless, with the attractive concept in sight, I began to work towards it. Although I did not see the boy with much frequency, I daily encountered an older girl who knew of him, in a sort-of afterschool club for pupils who had to wait to be picked up by parents. She was rebellious, spoke her mind, bitchy and belligerent. Perhaps in another life I would have fancied such a human being. Instead, she came in handy as a correspondent between the boy and I. Shortly after I finally gained the courage to tell the older girl that I was gay and liked the older boy, I briefly met him one school lunchtime with the knowledge that he knew I liked him. I still mentally swoon at his witticisms and charm at the time, despite there being no sign that he liked me back (however, there was no sign that he did not).

Due to the brevity of the meeting, I did what any atavistic teen would. Lacking a phone or a social network account at the time, I decided to write a love letter. Yes, really.

As further evidence of what I now see as my simultaneous innocence and foolishness, one lesson before the end of the day, I gave the letter to one of the boy's friends, asking her (not the same girl already described) to deliver it to him. And at the end of the day, I saw the aforementioned bitchy-and-belligerent older girl at the afterschool club once again. She now had the letter. Worse, also in the club, for one terrifying night only, were people I knew from my own year. I had previously thought that I could keep any sort of friendship or relationship with the older boy a secret. Apparently, the boy had read the letter, but I haven't the foggiest why he decided to give it to the girl. Seemingly enjoying my terror at being "outed", she threatened to expose the letter to Facebook and the like. Without going into tedious detail, the letter's final paragraph contained some explicit descriptions of feelings and...desires, so to speak. Frightened, I begged her to give the letter back to me. Acknowledging I couldn't bloody well trust myself with it, I did what any other socially awkward gay idiot would do: I told a teacher there to bin it for me, before being picked up.

The following morning at school, I met the older girl and her group of friends, whereupon she suggested that the information - Christ, I'm fucking formal, aren't I? - had still been revealed online. Oh dear. And thus, as I headed to my first class of the day, I was tormented by taunting twits, primarily in my year. The boys wagged tongues in a suggestive manner mockingly, along with various nasty comments, and the girls screeched like hyenas, telling nearby boys to stay away from me. At this point, I was already upset over my embarrassment over the love letter being known, my inference that the boy I liked was responsible, and as the icing on the cake of frustration, I felt ill. But as I headed towards my classroom, I was stopped, by none other than my head of year. He was bald, with more than just a passing resemblance to Voldemort. He called me into his office (bear in mind that this is a Catholic faith school). He revealed he had the love letter which, to reiterate, was a bit sexually explicit and candid about my feelings about the boy. He interrogated me somewhat, although not in an unpleasant or angry way (I had always been a good pupil). Then he pointed to the most explicit parts of the letter, asking what I meant by those words. Awkwardly, I mumbled incoherently that I didn't recall writing those things. It made little to no sense of course, yet I believe he understood perfectly well what I meant by those words.

Subsequently, I tried to put the whole mess out of mind until break-time, when I attempted to confront the boy. In a strange, unclear conversation about matters which he seemed partially ignorant of, what it led to was something that I suppose was a "break-up". Actually, it was more like being dumped by him. Upset and ill, it wasn't long before I ended up in the school's medical room. My dad came to pick me up, complicating things a bit. I essentially said that I could type or write the matter down for him to read. Because I wasn't especially ill, and also because that day was the day that was meant to be the first official day for a "film club" I had created, I remained in school, putting matters out of mind once more, while responding to incessant questions from people about my sexuality by stating that I was bisexual, rather than homosexual, because I presumed boys would be more accepting if I liked the things they liked too.

Unfortunately, I couldn't put the issue out of my mind forever, and when I was picked up by my dad at the end of the day, he revealed that he now had possession of the hot potato in the story. Yes, the love letter. He had had a meeting with Lord Voldemort and another teacher about me. He was not especially intolerant or angry, just a bit dubious and questioning. Upon getting home, my mum was enraged. Not so much over the possibility of having a gay son, but more about the fact that I had written a love letter and inadvertently come out of the closet. A long, awkward conversation that evening culminated in them basically trying to convince me that it was just a passing phase that everyone goes through. They even asked me whether I wanted to have anal sex; at that point I didn't, so they believed that it proved I wasn't gay.

In the aftermath, I backtracked on everything I said about being gay or bisexual. Somehow the older girl ended up in trouble with Voldemort - obviously more was going on behind the scenes than I knew of, but never mind. I never spoke to the boy I liked again. I would rarely but occasionally see me in the school corridors, and greet him nonchalantly. He would not respond, so a part of me then grew to loathe him, while a part of me still bloody loved him.

Two years on: the whole incident had been forgotten by the student body, and I had not mentioned anything to my parents since then. However, while reading various philosophical essays and so forth, one day I became inspired to be open with myself and others, so I properly came out to my parents. First, to my mum, who responded with initial silence and wide eyes. Both my parents simply reiterated their belief it was just a phase I was going through, but in a more subdued manner. This time they made it clear they would still accept and love me if I was gay. They warned me not to try to be open in school again, because they understandably believed it would lead to bullying. I was already a weak, shy and introverted human being who had been bullied previously, and being openly gay wouldn't help matters. I haven't properly discussed it with them since then.

Nonetheless, I had started to gain friends by then, in a way. A few months before turning 16, I told a few of them, while begging them to keep it secret. The process since has been a gradual way of coming out to my peers at school, revealing it to a few people or a group of people at a time, until the majority knew. And, pleasantly surprisingly, everyone was totally tolerant and accepting. At worst, I was called a "queer" once. Unfortunately, alongside this, I had become infatuated with another boy, this one my own age, and one I had known longer than the other. In a way, I'm still rather infatuated with him, although sadly unlike the other boy, he is completely heterosexual.

Oh well.