Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 19:56:52 -0400 From: glaad@glaad.org (GLAAD) Subject: GLAADAlert 6.13.97 GLAADALERT June 13, 1997 The GLAADAlert is the weekly activation tool of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation Con Air: The Rock, Part 2 This summer producer Jerry Bruckheimer brings us a new blockbuster action picture featuring a gratuitous and hackneyed gay character in the current #1 movie in America, Con Air. Last year he brought us The Rock, a blockbuster action picture featuring a gratuitous and hackneyed stereotypical gay hairdresser (see GLAADAlert 6.17.96). The character, "Sally Can't-Dance," is a mincing, shrieking, cross-dressing effeminate Latino gay man who has absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the movie and appears solely for the purpose of being ridiculed and denigrated. At one point, as the rest of the escaped convicts are working to get the hijacked airplane back in the air, Sally breaks into a nearby trailer and maniacally rummages through the suitcases, squealing with delight upon finding a lavender sun dress. The character proceeds to wear the dress through the rest of the film. When super bad guy Virus (John Malcovich) later asks Sally to guard the cockpit, he says, "If anybody tries to get through, you scratch his eyes out." In a brief and senseless struggle with hero Cameron Poe (Nicholas Cage), Poe is about to punch Sally, but reconsiders and instead knocks Sally to the floor with an open-handed slap. When Sally is arrested the officer says, "Hold it right there, lady," to which he replies, "Oh, men in uniform." Despite the considerable screen time that the character has, Sally is never developed beyond this one-dimensional anti-gay stereotype. GLAAD has received complaints about the film from all over the country on our AlertLine (1-800-GAY MEDIA) and AlertLine Online (www.glaad.org). By including this representation, producer Bruckheimer and Touchstone Pictures have plummeted to new lows, reinforcing stereotypes, and portraying violence against gay people as something humorous. Tell Bruckheimer and Touchstone that such open and ugly bigotry not only fosters stereotypes about gay people (and people of color), it implicitly condones violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Spreading hate is no laughing matter. Contact: Donald DeLine, President, Touchstone Pictures, 500 S. Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA 91521-0001, fax: 818.848.6415, e-mail through the Disney Web site at http://www.disney.com/Mail; Jerry Bruckheimer, Producer, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, 1631 10th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90404. L.A. Radio Hog Contest Is Hateful Hogwash A current contest promotion on Los Angeles radio station KLSX-FM 97.1 has a snively contest entrant defensively asserting that he is not a "fagela" (Yiddish for "fag") or a "fem." The contest to win a Harley-Davidson Bad Boy motorcycle, begins with an announcer, saying, "Face it, wuss, you wanna be a bad boy." The contest entrant later states, "Aw, jeez, I could be all done up in leather, like Arnie the Terminator," to which the announcer responds, "More like the wimp-inatior." "Hey!" says the entrant, "I'm no fagela!" At the end of the spot, the announcer reels off the call letters, "KLSX-FM." The entrant says, "Hey, who you callin' a fem?" The contest is sponsored by Harley Davidson, the supermarket chain Food-4-Less and Granny Goose, a regional producer of snack foods. By equating being a "wimp" with being gay, the advertisement propagates the absurd stereotype that being a sissy is synonymous with being a gay man, and vice-versa. The entrant's defensiveness also implies that being gay is a bad thing. In addition, by saying that "bad boys" such as "Arnie the Terminator" are strong and that "fem" men are not, the spot attacks those who transcend gender norms and assumes that being macho is what defines toughness. Such generalizations help to foster ignorance about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Tell both KLSX and the sponsors of the contest that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their friends and family will think twice about supporting businesses that support stereotypes of gay people in a lame attempt at cheap laughs. Contact: Scott Segelbaum, Promotion Director, KLSX-FM, 3580 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90010-2501, fax: 213.386.3649; Harley Davidson Motor Co., 3700 W. Juneau Avenue, PO Box 653, Milwaukee, WI 53208; Food-4-Less, 777 S. Harbour Boulevard, La Habra, CA 90631; Granny Goose, 930 98th Avenue, Oakland, CA 94603-9978. Iowa Paper Stands Up To Job Discrimination The June 10 editorial of the Des Moines Register urged the city to add sexual orientation to the list of protections from discrimination in employment and housing. Five months ago, Roger Crow, the administrator at St. Katharine's Living Center in Davenport, Iowa, fired several employees because of their sexual orientation, but state and federal authorities have done nothing to challenge him. In an interview with the local Quad City Times, Crow said that, "When I first came here, there was probably at least three faggots working here and at least three dykes....It was like, 'These people are gone.'...[Gay people] are not a part of society as far as I'm concerned." According to the Register editorial, "Des Moines mayoral candidate Jim Cownie told a gay and lesbian rights group last week he needs more information before forming a position on adding gay rights to the city's human rights ordinance. For starters, he could check [the Davenport firings].... The care center collects $600,000 yearly in state money, but the state human-rights law lacks a provision protecting gays. Des Moines...prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex or religion. Gays seek to add 'sexual orientation' to that list. The intent is not affirmative action, just equality. Cownie mentioned increased litigation costs as a possible argument against the action. That same could be said of protection afforded any of the other groups already listed." The editorial concluded that, "Discrimination based on obtuse observations regarding 'faggots and dykes' is no less onerous than discrimination stemming from similar characterizations based on gender or color." Considering the reintroduction of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in Congress, the editorial could not have been better timed, highlighting that without such protections from discrimination on the local, state and federal level, anti-gay bigots can fire people simply based on sexual orientation. Please congratulate the Des Moines Register for its call to action in the face of ugly bigotry and political foot-dragging. Contact: Dennis Ryerson, Editor, Des Moines Register, 715 Locust Street, Des Moines, IA 50309-3724, fax: 515.286.2504, e-mail: letters@dmreg.com PBS's P.O.V. Out of Focus PBS's POV recently rejected the documentary, Out at Work , from award winning documentary filmmakers Kelly Anderson and Tami Gold, which tells the story of gay men and lesbians who had suffered job discrimination. The film was a finalist for the Public Broadcasting Service series Point of View (P. O. V.) , a national showcase for independent documentaries, but when reviewed by PBS was turned down. The reason stated: "problematic funding" given to the filmmakers by seven labor unions and the Astrea National Lesbian Action Foundation, comprising only 23% of the film's total budget. Even while turning the film down, Sandra Heberer, Director of News and Information Programming for PBS, called the film "compelling television reasonably done on a significant issue of our times." Considering the millions of dollars given to PBS by private corporations to support programming, it seems ironic that they would use this justification to turn down a movie they themselves found "compelling." The network has aired a documentary funded by the New York Times about its own history, James Reston: The Man Millions Read, and corporations such as Prudential Securities, Met Life and Travelers underwrite the PBS series Wall Street Week and Adam Smith's Money World. Conflict of interest may well be in the eyes of the beholder. Please tell PBS that films like Out At Work are vital to the lives of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, and that keeping them off the air due to selectively enforced funding rules is not just a disservice to our community, but breach of the mission of public broadcasting as a whole. Contact: Sandra Heberer, Director of News and Information Programming, Public Broadcasting Service, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 22314-1698, fax: 703.739.5295. Newspaper Erases Sexual Orientation from Clinton's Anti-Hate Crime Speech President Clinton's June 7 radio address spelled out a plan to confront hate crimes against people on the basis of, among other things, sexual orientation, but you wouldn't know it reading the Louisville (Kentucky) Courier-Journal. The Associated Press wire story featured examples of hate crimes cited by Clinton: "He pointed to several recent incidents," the original wire read, "A midnight spray of gunfire on the new home of a black family moving into a predominantly white Atlanta suburb; the beating of a homosexual Washington man by attackers shouting anti-gay epithets; and the bombing of a Jewish student's Los Angeles dormitory room." In addition, the original item said, "At a time when violent crime is generally on the decline, the Human Rights Campaign...cites FBI statistics showing a 42 percent rise in reported hate crimes from 1991 to 1995. Almost 13 percent of the incidents were based on sexual orientation." The Courier-Journal omitted both sections of the story, eliminating any mention of sexual orientation. Wire service stories are frequently cut down by newspapers in the interest of space. When those edits completely delete a major point of a story, however, more than word count gets lost. By rendering gay men and lesbians invisible in Clinton's discussion of hate crimes, the Courier-Journal misrepresents both the president and the severity of hate crimes based on anti-gay hostility. The newspaper's omission also misinforms its readership by denying them one of the most salient details of the AP story. Let the Courier-Journal know that withholding information about violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people allows such hate crimes to go unchecked. Contact: David Hawpe, Editor, Courier-Journal, PO Box 740031, Louisville, KY 40201-7431, fax: 502.582.4075, e-mail: emanassa@louisvil.gannett.com. The Celluloid Web Site Rough Cut, the cyberspace extension of a daily TNT movie-industry news report, features a number of articles addressing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movies and movie history in honor of Pride month. Last week's issue included a listing of 50 "fabulous" gay films, drag diva Lady Bunny's ten favorite drag performances on the big screen, and ten of the best portrayals of the community picked by GLAAD. The page also included a prominently displayed rainbow freedom flag. This week's issue includes an interview with GLAAD Entertainment Media Director Chastity Bono on Hollywood and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender representations. Please check out Rough Cut's site (http://www.roughcut.com), and thank them for highlighting the Pride of the entertainment media. Contact: Andy Jones, Editor and Chris Brandon, Section Editor, Rough Cut, 1050 Techwood Drive, Atlanta, Georgia 30318, fax: 404.885.0855, e-mail (Chris Brandon): chris.brandon@turner.com. GLAADAlert Update: Dr. Laura Keeps Piling It On Anti-gay radio host and columnist Dr. Laura Schlessinger is at it again (see GLAADAlert 5.30.97), calling sexual orientation a "lifestyle," and dismisses lesbian and gay headed families. In a recent column, a father of two young children wrote Dr. Laura asking whether or not to tell the kids that their mother divorced him four years ago because she realized she is a lesbian. "I was a weekend dad until this year, when my ex-wife gave me the children," he notes. Dr. Laura responds saying the children will be affected by [the mom] "divorcing their father, giving them up and leading a lesbian lifestyle." To her credit, she encourages being open about the mother's sexual orientation, but adds, "in a way that doesn't threaten their own hopefulness for a future as a heterosexual, married person who can sustain an intact family.... I think it is fair to explain that a very small number (this helps allay their likely fears of perhaps becoming gay) of both men and women feel drawn to someone of the same sex." Without additional information about the circumstances of either parent or the children, Dr. Laura assumes that the transfer of primary custody of the children to the father ("giving up") is somehow connected to her sexual orientation. (Does this mean that for the first three years after the divorce that the father "gave up" the children due to his own heterosexuality?) Through her own bigot-colored glasses, Dr. Laura also assumes that the idea of alternative families would throw the children into fits of despair despite the reality that numerous fully functional and loving models undoubtedly exist in their everyday life. She does not suggest explaining to them that being gay is most likely something one is born as (which Dr. Laura herself has stated she believes). Her own anti-gay bias blinds her to even the most basic of scientific facts about gay parenting and the development of sexual orientation. Let Dr. Laura know that if she is going to claim that she knows anything about child development, gay parenting and sexual orientation she should get her facts straight and work past her own hate, or she does a disservice not only to gay people and their families but to the profession she claims to be a part of. Contact: Dr. Laura Schlessinger, New York Times Syndication Sales Corp., 122 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10168, phone: 1.800.375.2872, WWW: http://www.drlaura.com/forum. 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. Contact GLAAD by e-mail at glaad@glaad.org or by phone at 213.658.6775 (Los Angeles), 212.807.1700 (New York), 202.986.1360 (Washington, DC) or 415.861.2244 (San Francisco). Report defamation in the media by calling GLAAD's Toll-Free AlertLine! 1-800-GAY-MEDIA (1-800-429-6334) Visit GLAAD's Web Site at http://www.glaad.org "GLAADAlert," "GLAAD" and "Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation" are registered trademarks of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Inc.