Long after I’d given up hope of seeing anything even close to a principled stand by a Republican, something incredible happened. It’s amazing to me that the party responsible for my wonderment is the same attorney who represented George Bush in the Bush v. Gore election caper, former Solicitor General, Theodore Olson.
Last year, Ted Olson joined with David Boies, the opposing lawyer in Bush v. Gore, and a staunch Democrat, to bring a federal lawsuit against Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenging Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage. This odd couple of ideologically opposed lawyers, of course prevailed in overturning Prop. 8.
This morning on Fox News Sunday, Olson appeared with Chris Wallace to discuss the recent defeat of Prop 8 in a California courtroom. I find Chris Wallace to be the single toadiest, most craven, ass-licking employee of Fox News. That’s really saying something, I realize, but Chris Wallace is a nauseating one-man wind-up toy of Republican talking points. He’s not a journalist, he’s a weenie. He’s not a conservative, he’s a Republican and as Olson proves in the following clip, there is a very big difference between the two. Republicans used to have a credible reputation for being anti-statist and wanting to keep the government off the backs of the people and out of their lives. That was then and this is now. Now, who the fuck knows what they stand for except for the interests of the ruling class and abject stupidity? If the Republicans got smart and ran someone brilliant like Olson instead of ignoramuses like Sharron Angle and Sarah Palin, maybe they’d have a chance in general elections, but that’s not going to happen, not for a long time:
Olson: (to Wallace) Well, would you like your right to free speech? Would you like Fox’s right to free press put up to a vote and say well, if five states approved it, let’s wait till the other 45 states do? These are fundament constitutional rights. The Bill of Rights guarantees Fox News and you, Chris Wallace, the right to speak. It’s in the constitution. And the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the denial of our citizens of the equal rights to equal access to justice under the law, is a violation of our fundamental rights. Yes, it’s encouraging that many states are moving towards equality on the basis of sexual orientation, and I’m very, very pleased about that. … We can’t wait for the voters to decide that that immeasurable harm, that is unconstitutional, must be eliminated.
Now that this country’s judicial system has again inched a bit closer to its enlightened ideals, why not enjoy a bewildered chuckle courtesy of Peter Barber Gallagher-Sprigg via wakingupnow.com?
Hopefully Spider-Man isn’t sulking over it.
(via WOW Report)
By 1937, surrealism was in its second decade as a movement. Its artists and filmmakers were making inroads into London and New York galleries, and becoming media stars. The surrealist bug also bit on the West Coast, and underground gatherings like the Hollywood Film and Foto League screened European avant-garde films regularly.
Such gatherings attracted politically minded actor Harry Hay and Works Progress Administration (WPA) photographers Roger Barlow and LeRoy Robbins. After seeing a magazine ad for a short film contest, these jokers sprung into action, making Even—As You and I, a short depicting themselves as broke filmmakers who cobble together clichés from their fave avant-garde films into a dorky film-within-a-film spoof called The Afternoon of a Rubber Band. In a “D’oh!”-style ending, the three realize they’ve missed the contest’s midnight deadline.
A damn clever little underground film moment. Hay—the curly-haired guy in the group—would go on to become the godfather of gay activism, founding the Mattachine Society in the early’50s and the Radical Faeries in the early ‘70s.
Check out part 2 after the jump!
Nothing like a good banning to warm an old gay punk’s heart—especially in the internet age. Looks like Australia’s classification of Toronto-based filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s latest bit of hardcore underground gay gore, L.A. Zombie as pornography has prevented it from being screened at the Melbourne Film Festival. According to Melbourne talk-radio station 3AW, LaBruce couldn’t be happier:
‘‘My first thought was ‘Eureka!’… I’ll never understand how censors don’t see that the more they try to suppress a film, the more people will want to see it. It gives me a profile I didn’t have yesterday.’’
Virtually all of LaBruce’s films—from the skinhead-fetishizing No Skin off My Ass from 1991 through to the political-porno-zombie flick Otto; or Up With Dead People—have managed to shock and scandalize straights and gays alike with their violence and satirical stereotyping. It’s good to know there are some areas in the Western world that aren’t immune.
LA Zombie trailer
Uploaded by blankytwo.
Forget about Chelsea Clinton. Jamil Smith Cole and Michael K. Cole were married in what has been called “the wedding of the century.”
If the black gay community has ever come close to having a celebrity- married couple then Jamil Smith Cole and Michael K. Cole are it.
You gotta love Michael and Jamil for not only proclaiming their love for each, but doing it in style.
More images and text after the jump…
Watch out, they’re everywhere!
Via our friends at World of Wonder
For a Catholic country that’s endured more coups in the past century than a Tea Party rank-and-filer can conceive of, Argentina seems to have come into its democratic own this week as it joined the other nine nations that have legalized same-sex marriage.
Andrés Duque’s great Blabbeando blog has provided great coverage, including some enlightened sport-star involvement in the issue and the segment below featuring baby-dyke blogstar Cumbio. In a report for Buenos Aires TV magazine Vertigo, homegirl and her camera crew walk right up to participants in an anti-gay marriage demonstration and starts engaging them, taking in a bunch of the usual insulting arguments against equality. But in a startling scene that you couldn’t imagine in a similar segment here in the US, she’s actually embraced and kissed by some of the maternal types among the evangelicals who insist on the old cliché that “it’s the sin, not the sinner.” Cumbio comes out of it a little annoyed, but notes later that they “didn’t treat [her] badly.”
Kinda refreshing, eh?
Bonus clip after the jump: Federacion Argentina LGBT’s simple and powerful ad for marriage equality…
