Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 16:52:15 -0700 From: Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Subject: GLAADAlert 11.27.96 GLAADALERT November 27, 1996 The GLAADAlert is the weekly activation tool of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Contents: 1. Landford's Latest Lesbian (ABC (TV Network), Roseanne (TV Sitcom)) 2. Star Trek's Sexual Smoke and Mirrors (UPN (TV Network), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (TV Sci-Fi), Star Trek: Voyager (TV Sci-Fi)) 3. New York Undercover Bashes Bisexuals (FOX (TV Network), New York Undercover (TV Drama)) 4. NPR Gives Hate A Soapbox (NPR (Radio), Morning Edition (Radio Program)) 5. Saturday Night Live -- Even Less Funny (NBC (TV Network), Saturday Night Live (TV Sketch Comedy)) 6. No Winking In The Windy City (Chicago Tribune (Print Media)) 7. "K-Chronicles" Take On The Gay Gene (San Francisco Examiner (Print Media), K-Chronicles (Comic Feature)) 8. AP Highlights Gay History (Associated Pres (Newswire)) 1. Lanford's Latest Lesbian On the November 26 Roseanne, Jackie and Roseanne's mother, Beverly Harris (Estelle Parsons) inadvertently came out to her family during Thanksgiving dinner. After gay couple Leon (Martin Mull) and Scott (Fred Willard) announced they are planning on adopting a child, everyone congratulated them-except Bev, who is opposed to two men adopting a child. Tensions continue to grow until, at the dinner table, Bev brings her disapproval up again, saying she doesn't care for men at all, especially her ex-husband, and declares how by the end of the relationship, the only way she could have sex with him was if she "stalked off to the store and bought a Playboy first." Darlene says, "I think Grandma just outed herself." What follows is acceptance, albeit with disbelief and Conner-style mocking, from her family. Leon welcomes Bev "to the club," and Scott adds, "We'll teach you the secret handshake." By adding not one but two new dimensions (the issues of being an older lesbian, and gay adoptions), the show promises to continue to enlighten and entertain audiences everywhere. Please let Roseanne and ABC know how much we appreciate the inclusion of a major older lesbian character on the show and encourage them to the develop both Bev's storyline and Leon and Scott's wish to adopt a child. Contact: Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner, Roseanne, Daniel Palladino, Executive Producers, Roseanne, c/o Carsey-Werner Productions, 4024 Radford Avenue, Building 3, Studio City, CA 91604, fax: 818.760.5882; Ted Harbert, Chairperson, Jamie Tarses, President, Brett White of Broadcast Standards, ABC, 2040 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles, CA 90067, fax: Jamie Tarses-310.557.7679, Ted Harbert -310.557.7160, Brett White-310.557.7160, e-mail: abcaudr@ccabc.com. 2. Star Trek's Sexual Smoke and Mirrors During the week beginning November 17, both Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine had episodes that toyed with the theory of polymorphous desire, yet Paramount is no nearer to having genuinely lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters. Deep Space Nine's Dax is a Trill who once inhabited a male body but now lives in Jadzia, a female host body. Jadzia Dax had one of the most passionate same-sex kisses ever to appear on prime-time television in an episode last November when Dax was reunited with a female lover of Dax's past male "host." Now, though, Jadzia Dax is in a relationship with the male Klingon, Worf, and rarely expresses any same-sex desires. In the November 17 episode, "Let He Who Is Without Sin...," while on a vacation pleasure world, Dax briefly flirts with a pleasure hostess (Vanessa Williams) whom Dax had been involved with while inhabiting a different male host. On "Warlord," the November 17 Voyager, the mild-mannered female crewmember Kes is possessed by an ancient alien warrior after his host body dies. While possessed, Kes tries to regain the warrior's throne, assuring his wife that he will always love her in spite of his new female body, and that the wife will always have a place with him. In the Kes body, he also marries the son of a warrior and proposes that the three of them (Kes, the warrior's wife, and the warrior/Kes's new husband) forge a new relationship together. Both episodes are intriguing in their gender-blending, and progressive in terms of challenging our conventional concepts of gender and identity. However, once the science fiction smoke and mirrors are cleared away, there are still no adequate lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters on Star Trek. Dax's standard desires are embodied by characters who happen to be the opposite sex of the host bodies. And while Kes had a one-episode bi-trans whirl, audiences could rest assured by the end of the program that any non-heterosexual activity was purely temporary, and, in fact, a "possession." Paramount has continued to ignore the wishes of series creator Gene Roddenberry and over 5,000 forward-thinking trekkies by creating a future where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are the only invisible members of the Federation. Let Paramount know that this heterosexuals-only vision of the future is really warped. Contact: Lucie Salhany, President-CEO, UPN, 555 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038, fax: 310.575.7201. 3. New York Undercover Bashes Bisexuals The November 22 episode of Fox's New York Undercover began with a scene in which a bisexual man discovers he has AIDS, fights with his (male) lover, fights with his wife (who didn't know he was bisexual or HIV-positive), and then gets murdered. Later it is discovered that the wife has become HIV-positive from her husband, and it is implied that the husband got HIV from the gay male lover. From that point on, the story shifts to the AIDS clinic where the husband was treated, and where other murders are occurring. None of the characters in the AIDS clinic are gay or bisexual, leaving the viewer with the singular impression of bisexual and gay men as presented by the husband and his lover. This attack on bisexuals and gay men not only perpetuates the stereotype that bisexual men are largely responsible for spreading AIDS to heterosexual women. It also implies that bisexual men can only get HIV through having sex with gay men, further compounding the lie that gay men are the carriers of the virus to the rest of society. It presents the stereotype of bisexuals as deceptive, promiscuous and "wanting to have it both ways," rather than the more authentic reality that while bisexuals have a sexual orientation towards both men and women, they don't necessarily have relationships with people from both genders simultaneously. Let Fox know that this kind of bisexual and gay bashing on television only encourages violence and harassment against bisexuals, gay men and people with AIDS in real life. Contact: Chase Carey, Chairperson/CEO, Fox Broadcasting Company, P.O. Box 900, Beverly Hills, CA 90123, fax: 310.369.1433, e-mail: askfox@foxinc.com.. 4. NPR Gives Hate A Soapbox In what has become an unsettling trend on National Public Radio's highly respected "Morning Edition," a religious extremist has been given totally undisputed air time in an offensive show about lesbian and gay representations in entertainment. On the November 26 edition, host Bob Edwards introduced a story, saying, "The Defense of Marriage Act recently passed by Congress affirmed that marriage legally exists only as a union between a man and a woman. But those values and convictions so clear in some political campaigns become clouded in the world of entertainment." Discussing the increasing visibility of lesbians and gay men on television, correspondent Brooke Gladstone interviews Peter LaBarbara, publisher of the virulantly anti-gay Lambda Report on Homosexuality, and marginal extremist who uses malicious lies about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to forward his hateful agenda. He was described only as "conservative." Predictably, he has little to say beyond his standard mantra, stating that "I believe that this is what I call the glamorization of homosexuality on primetime TV and in Hollywood. It's kind of the cultural elite saying we need to educate backwater America that homosexuality is okay." Gay writer and critic, Daniel Mendelson, was interviewed, presumably for "balance," to discuss how lesbian and gay representations were oversimplified and needed to be made more diverse in order to more accurately represent our community. This bizarre bias hinders the advances that lesbians and gays have made in television representation. Identifying the leader of an extremist hate group as "conservative" is akin to describing the head of the Ku Klux Klan as such. Defining the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" as a broadly supported mainstream reflection of American values dismisses the reality that it was spearheaded by the most anti-gay members of Congress. Finally, while Mendelson did a fine job in expressing his views, no one was given the opportunity to dispute LaBarbara's claims, his dubious credentials as an "expert" on lesbian and gay media representation, or even addressing the same issue that he was. Write NPR and let them know that this turn for the worse discredits them and does a profound disservice to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Contact: Address comments to Sharon Green, Senior Editor, Cultural Desk and copy letters to Bruce Straight, Managing Editor, National Public Radio, 635 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20001-3753, fax: 202.414.3040, e-mail: sgreen@npr.org and bstraight@npr.org. 5. Saturday Night Live-Even Less Funny The November 23 Saturday Night Live contained an extremely homophobic sketch that denigrated gays and promoted gay-bashing. The sketch-a parody called the "Joe Pesci Show"-had a SNL cast member dressed as Michael Jackson, accompanied by the expectant mother of his child. After a few rude comments, "Jackson" grumbles, "Why do I always have to prove I'm a heterosexual?" Another character, impersonating Frank Sinatra, responds by saying "If you'd stop turning Boy Scouts into millionaires, maybe we'd stop asking." After a number of requests for Jackson to "show us your penis," the Sinatra character opines how "in the old days, we would just throw your kind out the window," which prompts Pesci to grab a baseball bat and beat Jackson to the ground. This kind of blatant homophobia-and its tacit endorsement of gay bashing-is intolerable. In implying that the "Jackson" character is gay because of his alleged sexual interest in male children, SNL spreads the vicious lie that child molesters are gay (studies have shown time and again that they are overwhelmingly heterosexual men). Finally, it makes a joke out of beating up someone because they are perceived as gay. Let SNL know that violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is a threat to our lives-not fodder for a few laughs. Contact: Lorne Michaels, Executive Producer, Saturday Night Live, NBC, 30 Rockerfeller Plaza, New York, New York 10112, e-mail: snl@nbc.com; Warren Littlefield, President of NBC Entertainment, 300 West Alameda Blvd., Burbank, CA 91523, email: entertainment@nbc.com. 6. No Winking in the Windy City A November 25 Chicago Tribune editorial entitled, "A Lesson On Winking At Abuse," chastised the Ashland, Wisconsin school district and its administrators for turning their back on gay student Jamie Nabozny throughout repeated attacks by other students because he is gay. "One of any school's fundamental obligations is to protect its students and assure their bodily and psychological integrity. That basic obligation must be fulfilled for any learning to take place, and it cannot be dispensed with selectivity or withheld arbitrarily," the paper's editorial said. The Tribune celebrated the ruling of a nine-member federal jury that found the administrators had "discriminated against a gay high school student by failing to protect him from the verbal and physical brutality of his classmates." In commending lawyers from the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund (LLDEF), who represented Nabozny, they noted that LLDEF hoped the case gets the attention of school officials elsewhere and prompts action to prevent such abuse. "A word to the wise, we hope, would be sufficient," the editorial states. Please thank the Chicago Tribune for taking a stand against the intolerance, abuse and violence that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students are often subjected to and for speaking out against the administrators who turn their back on them. Contact: N. Don Wycliff, Editorial Page Editor, Chicago Tribune, P.O. Box 4041, Chicago, IL 60611, fax: 312.222.2598, e-mail: tribletter@aol.com. 7. "K-Chronicles" Take On the Gay Gene On November 12, "The K-Chronicles," a comic featured in the San Francisco Examiner, had a different look on the meaning of a gay Gene. "What the heck is all this commotion about the scientific discovery of a gay gene in different families?," the strip begins. "I could have told them about the gay Gene in my family long ago. My cousin Gene was always the coolest...He always had something encouraging to say about my artwork and when I actually cared about what I wore, I went to Gene for advice." Then artist Keith Knight reflected on how one Christmas Gene didn't make it because he was very sick with some unknown disease, and that shortly thereafter, Gene died. "I didn't realize that he was gay until I saw the Village People movie, Can't Stop the Music....I'm serious," Knight says. He also came to know that AIDS took Gene's life. In the final frame, Knight writes, "I hope that most of you folks are lucky enough to have a gay gene in the family like I had. I miss his warmth, charm, wit and smile. But the worst part about him being gone is that my wardrobe has really gone to shi*." During the week leading up to World AIDS Day, Knight's recent comic has a particular resonance. Please thank him for a touching, personal and powerful edition of "The K Chronicles," and thank the San Francisco Examiner for carrying it. Contact: Keith Knight, "The K Chronicles," P.O. Box 591794, San Francisco, CA 94159-1794; Phil Bronstein, Editor, San Francisco Examiner, 110 Fifth Street, San Francisco, CA 94111, fax: 415.512.1264, e-mail: sfexaminer@examiner.com. 8. AP Highlights Gay History The November 27 edition of the daily media "morning prep" sent by the Associate Press wire service to media outlets nationwide included an important date in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history as the "Highlight in History": "On November 27th, 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by former supervisor Dan White." Please commend the Associated Press for including the assassination of Harvey Milk in their "Today in History," and encourage them to feature more dates from lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history. Contact: Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, Fifth Floor, New York, NY 10020-1666, fax: 212.621.7520, e-mail: rgersh@ap.org. The GLAADAlert is the weekly activation tool of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. GLAAD is the lesbian and gay news bureau and the only national lesbian and gay multimedia watchdog organization. GLAAD promotes fair, accurate and inclusive representation as a means of challenging all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation or identity. Copies of articles referred to in the GLAADAlert are available to our members by contacting GLAAD. Contact GLAAD by e-mail at glaad@glaad.org or by phone at 213.658.6775 (Los Angeles), 212.807.1700 (New York), 413.586.8928 (Northampton), 202.986.1360 (Washington, DC) or 415.861.2244(San Francisco). 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