Yesterday, Andy from Towleroad via Left in SF ran a quote from Roseanne Barr that was so ignorant and ill-informed and untrue about gay people in general that I will offer no comment on it other than to link to it.Last night, a reader of this blog sent me the following link, a very sad coming out story about a college lacrosse coach. Keep reminding yourself it is 2007 when you read this.
What happened? A dozen players, including a star, scared away from the team. Slurs written on Facebook. A game referee comparing gays to child molesters. And a new "debate" about whether a gay coach should even be allowed in the locker room.
We have a long way to go. Roseanne Barr's ignorance isn't helping.
5 comments:
Problem with not hearing the entire dialogue is you don't know what context someone was talking. Maybe she had a point that made sense in more context? Maybe she was referring to someone specific? Roseanne has never been known to be anti-gay. I won't judge her until I hear the entire conversation. I prefer to think there's more to the story than what was printed on the site you saw this.
jer: strong point. context is key. and she is not historically a homophobe. but i really bristle at what i read.
I read Roseanne’s comments....ignorant and ill-formed, yes. But untrue? Isn’t the unwillingness to hear varying points of view what she was maybe getting at?
It was ignorant and ill-formed for a number of reasons (What’s a billionaire talking about minimum wage? Wasn’t she a gay icon there for a while, having a lesbian kiss on her show? And as Left in SF notes, she doesn’t give credit to all the other activist work), but I guess I can empathize with the point that she’s making, as hateful and stupid as she sounds, in that sexual identity politics can be rigid. And conservative. And not open to differences of opinion.
i think the general truth of her remarks would be (as my friend Bobby M always tells me) that
people are fundamentally self-interested and, maybe,even selfish. it's human nature, gay or straight. but to limit this to gay human nature strikes me as
ill-informed.
i think roseanne points to a truth about humans more than she does to a truth about gay humans.
I can't even begin to describe how offended I am at her saying, in a blanket statement, that I don't care about issues such as immigration or the war in iraq just because it's not related my sexual identity.
If you want to hear the full dialog, the archived radio show is linked from my LeftInSF blog entry.
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