GLAAD’s ‘Studio Responsibility Index’ Finds Hollywood Fails at LGBT Representation

feature image from Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

As someone who came of gay age in the 90s, we gobbled up any piece of queer media like it was gold, even if it was Bad Girls, and had a party when Ellen DeGeneres came out on national television. Now we expect that LGBT characters will appear in TV and movies. But does the reality match the perception? GLAAD just released its second annual ‘Studio Responsibility Index’ and found that of the 102 major studio releases only 17 of them contained any characters identifying as LGBT. Those that were portrayed tended to be tangential and/or stereotypical.

This report examined films that were released theatrically during the 2013 calendar year (January 1 to December 31) under the official studio banners and imprints. Films released by officially separate studio divisions (such as Fox Searchlight) are acknowledged, but were not part of the final tally, as these specialty films are typically distributed and marketed to a much smaller audience than their major studio counterparts. Studios profiled included 20th Century Fox, Lionsgate (new this year), Paramount Pictures, Sony Columbia Pictures, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Brothers. The report then goes on to mention a few smaller studios at the end.

Film scholar Vito Russo who wrote the benchmark book on queer film The Celluloid Closet via Village Voice

The rubric of measurement is a test they’ve dubbed the Vito Russo Test. Similar to the Bechdel Test, wherein a film must contain at least 2 named women to talk to each other about something other than a man, the Russo test most follow these guidelines:

1. The film contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender.
2. That character must not be solely or predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity. I.E. they are made up of the same sort of unique character traits commonly used to differentiate straight characters from one another.
3. The LGBT character must be tied into the plot in such a way that their removal would have a significant effect. Meaning they are not there to simply provide colorful commentary, paint urban authenticity, or (perhaps most commonly) set up a punchline. The character should “matter.”

Less than half of the already paltry 17 films with LGBT character passed the Russo test with both Paramount and Warner Brothers receiving the worst “failing grades.” Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney Studios fell into the “adequate” camp and kudos went to Sony Columbia with a “good” score. Although no studio has yet received an “excellent” rating, Sony did receive a GLAAD nomination for one film included here: Mortal Instruments: City of Bones. They were also one of three studios that had improved their rating from last year’s level, joined by 20th Century and Walt Disney who received a bump up from last year’s fails. Universal remained an unexciting C student and Paramount and Warner Brothers both lost a grade level.

“The lack of substantial LGBT characters in mainstream film, in addition to the outdated humor and stereotypes suggests large Hollywood studios may be doing more harm than good when it comes to worldwide understanding of the LGBT community,” said GLAAD’s CEO and President Sarah Kate Ellis. “These studios have the eyes and ears of millions of audience members, and should reflect the true fabric of our society rather than feed into the hatred and prejudice against LGBT people too often seen around the globe.”

Anchorman 2 included trans slurs for no other reason than comedic (sic) value

Some of the recommendations GLAAD proposes are:

1. Increase the diversity of franchises (especially comics etc). There may be ample opportunity to do so with upcoming release such as the female Thor and others.
2. Include LGBT characters in the lead, not just support.
3. Diversity within LGBT characters should be considered. There needs to be more gender-balanced, racial diversity, and from many backgrounds.
4. Trans characters should be included in non derogatory ways. (There were no transgender characters in the 2012 releases GLAAD tracked, but the two found in the 2013 releases were almost worse than nothing. One was a trans woman very briefly depicted in a jail cell, while the other was an outright defamatory depiction included purely to give the audience something to laugh at.)
5. Anti-gay slurs are less common but should be avoided completely if at all possible. It’s not funny.

I would add that, in the spirit of the Bechdel Test, there should be gasp more than one queer character, they should be named and they should talk to each other about something real. Bonus points if they talk about other queer people, their lives not in relation to their sexuality or a topic that leads to the ultimate resolution of the film’s main plot problem. But I know that’s asking a lot.

VIDEO: Red Carpet Crushes and the Cast of Orange is the New Black

Hello beautiful peaches of this sweet world, guess what today is? International Day of Orange is the New Black Season Two, holigay of Netflix binge-watching queers everywhere. Hope you’ve got your weed, snacks, boo thangs, and updated account info, because shit is about to pop off. Sound the gay alarms, ring the queer church bells, send the label-free text messages because our favorite show on internet TV land is BACK.

Woo! Bust most of you already know this; in fact, my FB feed is filled with countdown statuses like “5 more days until the return of Poussey!” (as if she ever left us) and jokes about how the hottest pick-up line of the month is “Hey, girl, I’ve got Netflix.” So I know that most of you are already on the OitNB up and up. I am so damn proud of all of you but I swear to lesbian Jesus if any of you do some spoiler status shit, I WILL CUT YOU.

I kid. Stop the Violence. Anyway, let’s take a step back and talk about that time that Autostraddle sent me and the stone cold fox that is AS Fashion Editor Lizz to the GLAAD Media Awards in New York to do some red carpet interviews.

Lizz and I on the way to the Awards. We fancy.

We got to meet and greet so many gay icons and celezbrities and then we all went to A-camp and forgot everything! But lo and behold, amidst all the crazy times, we remembered how many of those interviews came from the cast of Orange is the New Black. Now, that doesn’t include everyone, unfortunately, Samira Wiley and Laura Prepon were ushered past the red carpet, or at least past us, and led directly to their guest table. Taylor Schilling and Uzo Aduba attended the White House Correspondent’s Dinner that evening and so they weren’t even around for us to lovingly harass. But never fear; thankfully, enough of the fly babes from Orange is the New Black made the rounds on that magical carpet for us to ask some questions, get some kisses, and create this video for you all to enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfaGVbW6hAI

Autostraddle Nominated for GLAAD’s Outstanding Blog of the Year!

HELLO COMMUNITY.

This is a special announcement to alert you to the fact that we, Autostraddle.com — and so by extension YOU, because we’re a community-funded operation! #neverforget — have been nominated for GLAAD’s Outstanding Blog of the Year Award. Congratulations, reader!!

Our friends at Elixher are also nominated! Along with the excellent Transgriot! Such brilliant competition. We’re respectfully requesting that your cross your queer little fingers for us, because we like getting awards. Like, a lot.

You may remember that we were also nominated for Outstanding Blog of the Year in 2013! We’re very popular and good at our jobs, you guys. Ron 2.0 won the award last year, but there was a vodka fountain and Founder / CEO Riese got a salad out of the deal so really, who can complain? ONWARD AND UPWARD.

The complete list of blogs nominated in this category are listed below and they are AMAZING and we’re legitimately super honored just to be nominated alongside them.

+ Elixher

+ Transgriot

+ The New Civil Rights Movement

+ Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

Riese will be telling you about the other nominees for the 25th GLAAD Awards a little later today, but for now let’s just bask in the sunshine of this moment together. Excitement!

“Saving Mr. Banks” Erases P.L. Travers’ Queer Identity, Misses Amazing Opportunity for Representation

I love Emma Thompson. She’s beautiful, an ardent feminist, a longtime ally of the LGBT community, and even, some would say, something of a gay icon. Practically perfect in every way. She’s been popping up in the news a lot lately for starring in movies, winning awards, making amazing speeches and perpetuating an enthralling bromance with Meryl Streep. So I was a bit taken aback to hear what she had to say on the subject of queer erasure in her latest film, Saving Mr. Banks.

Here’s the movie trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16MdSZH6I4o

Widely released at the end of December, Saving Mr. Banks is based on the true story of author P.L. Travers‘ experiences while working with the Disney team on the adaptation of her novel, Mary Poppins.

P.L. Travers as a young working actress, 1924. Here she was dressed for the role of Titania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

In real life — and in the film — Pamela Travers was an unconventional woman. But unlike the onscreen depiction of an uptight English homebody who seemingly turned her nose up at America, the real Travers was actually an adventurous, widely traveled woman who had previously lived in New York and in New Mexico. She did not despise children, and in fact she had an adopted son and would invite child fans into her house for lemonade. Most importantly, she did not live as a solitary, sexless spinster; over her lifetime she had romantic relationships with both men and women. Sometimes, she even wrote saucy erotica inviting readers to imagine taking off her undergarments.

Travers was a member of The Rope, a group of mostly lesbian writers who studied under a guru. She wrote in her diary about her off and on tempestuous relationship with Jessie Orage, known for wearing trousers and smoking in public. And Travers actually wrote Mary Poppins while she was living together with Madge Burnand, in a decade long relationship that Travers’ hyper-discreet biographer begrudgingly described as “intense.”

Aside from the quick flash of an obscure book in Travers’ library, there’s no hint of any of this in the film.

Movie Travers had some silver feather charms on her bracelet links and a vaguely southwestern ring featuring a black sunburst — a subtle but nice touch. Real life Travers reportedly was fond of wearing Native American turquoise and silver bracelets “stacked up each forearm like gauntlets.”

Instead, Saving Mr. Banks ruminates over Travers’ troubled childhood in Australia and her battle to maintain her (rigid) sense of dignity and artistic vision during a two week trip to Walt Disney Studios. The movie is charming and Emma Thompson, per usual, makes for an utterly endearing misanthrope. However, I have to question the decision to gloss over Travers’ queer identity.

In an interview published in The Advocate on Thursday, Thompson reasoned,

You can’t fit everything about a person’s life into two hours. Like when we made Carrington, which did address homosexuality, we didn’t include stuff about Dora Carrington’s relationships with women because it would’ve looked like she’d literally gone bed-hopping her entire life. Besides, Saving Mr. Banks is about a woman’s creative, artistic life. It’s a relief, quite frankly, because when is a movie about a woman not about her love life?

In the film, Travers fights to keep Bert from being portrayed as a romantic interest. In the books, Bert is a groupie and Mary Poppins is characterized as strident and plain looking, which some read as butch.

Thompson makes an interesting point. And to some extent, I agree — it is refreshing to see a woman on screen who isn’t an object of desire… if they’re straight. The thing is, we live in a heteronormative world where everyone is assumed to be straight until proven otherwise. Choosing not to represent queer women (and especially their love lives) isn’t new, and it isn’t a relief.

As GLAAD explained in its 2013 Studio Responsibility Index report,

When minority characters are marginalized or made invisible within these films, it not only reminds those being underrepresented that their social position is less than, but also makes it more difficult for the majority to see them as part of that film’s reality as well as a valid part of our own. … Movies reflect the world we live in, while also showing us where we came from and the endless possibilities for where we could end up. It’s important that Hollywood acknowledges that LGBT people are an important part of our society’s past, present, and future through the stories that they tell.

In Thompson’s remarks, she alluded to the fact that the film is not about Travers-the-person, but about Travers-the-artist, and the very specific period of time in which she was working with Walt Disney Studios on the film adaptation. Which is fine. But surely they could have found a way to tell this story without erasing Travers’ queerness.

In 2012, Walt Disney Pictures released 14 films. Only one had any detectable queer representation (out MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts playing himself while reporting on an alien invasion in The Avengers). Via GLAAD Studio Responsibility Index.

Just off the top of my head, I can think of multiple ways Travers’ queer identity could have been represented without derailing the existing plot. They wouldn’t even need to hire another actor. For example:

• When the lawyer is trying to convince Travers to take action to bring in some money, have him mention that she should think of her partner’s needs.
• When she fires the maid, have her reply that she’s going to appeal to Travers’ partner.
• When she sets up the trinkets that she brought from home, include a photo of Madge Burnand or Jessie Orage.
• During one of the scenes where Travers stares longingly at the hotel bar, have a woman catch her eye and send her a drink (which I imagine Travers would refuse, but still — that would read totally queer).
• When Disney visits Travers’ home in the end, show evidence that she lives with another woman.

I could probably think of five more without breaking a sweat, and I bet you could too. (Ooh, could we gender flip Screenwriter Don to Screenwriter Dawn? So much tension there!) I mean, maybe they aren’t all great ideas, but I’m sure those genius screenwriters at Disney could have come up with something if queer representation — or at least, avoidance of queer erasure — had been a priority. But it wasn’t.

In my mind, to fail at LGBT inclusion in fiction is to have a failure of imagination, a lazy lack of understanding concerning the world outside of one’s self. To intentionally choose to tell a story about a real LGBT person and then exclude their queer identity is a failure on an entirely different level. It’s perverse. It doesn’t matter whether the intent was malicious or not; the damage is still done.

While I don’t think that Emma Thompson meant any ill will to LGBT people by her remarks or participation in the film, the end result is yet another piece of work upholding heteronormativity and contributing to queer erasure. It may be too late to fix this one (as Disney told Travers at the Mary Poppins premiere: “the ship has sailed”), but it’s never too late to get the message out for next time.

GLAAD’s “Where We Are On TV” Shows Best Place To Be On TV Is Behind The Camera

When compiling our Fall 2013 TV Guide, I was disappointed by the lack of LGBT females we can anticipate blowing up our screenspace this season, especially following an unforgettable summer chock-full of scissoring Sapphics, bisexual bombshells and butch bomb girls. GLAAD‘s recently released Where We Are On TV report, which looks at the diversity of shows announced for the 2013-2014 season, did little to abate this concern. It also raised a lot of questions for me about how representation is measured and the reason why progress has come more quickly for some groups than others.

See, “Where We Are On TV” devotes its in-depth research to LGBT representation, but it also briefly tallies racial and gender diversity, offering multiple avenues from which to analyze representation’s quantification. If gay men and gay women are equally represented on network television, why doesn’t it feel that way? Has scripted television done its job if the percentage of women or people of color matches said group’s share of the U.S. population? If many of the LGB characters on television rarely or never address their sexual orientation, are they still worthy of our celebration? Why has LGB representation improved so much while PoC and female representation has stagnated? Let’s discuss.

TV Representation vs. Population Statistics

Measuring inclusivity and evaluating representation isn’t easy or straightforward, and one popular technique is comparing the percentages of certain groups on TV to U.S population statistics. Let’s look at how some of these comparisons stack up:

+ 43% of series regulars on scripted primetime television are female, but 51% of the country is female.

+ 77% of broadcast series regular characters are white, but 72% of the U.S. population is white.

+ 5% of broadcast series regular characters are Hispanic or Latino, but 16.3% of Americans are of Hispanic or Latino origin.

+ 11% of broadcast series regular characters are black, compared to 12.6% of the population.

+ 1.8% of the national population is bisexual, comprising 51% of those who identify as LGB. However, only 10% of LGBT network characters and 21% of LGBT cable characters are bisexual.

+ .001% of the 796 broadcast series regulars are transgender, but .03% of the national population is transgender.

+ The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011 Community Survey found 12% of U.S. citizens report living with an apparent disability, but GLAAD found that even when including all characters who would be covered by the American Disabilities Act, which includes people not accounted for in the Census numbers (like HIV-positive people), only 1% of primetime broadcast series regulars have a disability.

So how do we judge how much representation is “enough” representation? Obviously the numbers for Latino/a Americans are beyond unacceptable, but what about the others? It seems ridiculous to argue that there are plenty of Asian-American and Pacific Islander characters on television, but the percentage represented on television (6%) actually exceeds the percentage of the national population identifying in those groups (5%). Asian Pacific American Media Coalition co-chair Daniel Mayeda told GLAAD that despite those numbers, “we continue to advocate for television series in which we are the main star.” Fox got an “F” from the APAMC this year for its API inclusion efforts because it “failed to provide the data the APAMC has consistently requested and which the other networks have delivered for over a decade.” Fox didn’t even care enough to participate in the APAMC’s television report card. It’s about quality, not quantity.

Nor does it feel as if African-American representation is anywhere near an acceptable level, despite being in the general neighborhood of its relative population, likely because as ColorofChange Executive Director Rashad Robinson told GLAAD, despite those numbers, “the quality of those representations remain a serious cause for concern.” They cite Scandal and Suits‘ “complex, multi-dimensional Black characters” as real progress, but lament that “too often viewers are exposed to portrayals of Black people that are dehumanizing and inaccurate.” Quality. Not quantity.

Similarly, in 2012 Gallup found that 3.4% of the U.S. population identified as LGBT, which isn’t that far off from our visibility on television (although the 3.4% number represents only those who are out — I personally suspect that number will creep gradually towards 10% over the next few decades). For the 2013-2014 TV season, GLAAD found 26 LGBT-identified series regulars on broadcast networks out of 796 total series regulars — 3.3%, down from 4.4% in 2012. Cable networks boast a more impressive 42 LGBT characters out of an unidentified total. But none of us queers here would argue that we’re anywhere near annihilating our symbolic annihilation.

Ultimately, it’s unlikely television producers are considering population ratios when planning TV schedules, which makes the usefulness of that evaluation metric shaky. Besides, if they were working from numbers like that, we’d probably see more programming reflecting the fact that women watch more TV than men and black people watch more TV than other racial groups. If TV was aiming to adequately represent the population it depicts in fictional programming, we’d see far more diverse casts, considering most television shows are set in the most diverse areas of the country, especially cities like New York City (56% nonwhite and 4.5% LGBT as of 2006) and Los Angeles (70.6% nonwhite and 5.6% gay as of 2006). Furthermore, despite the fact that women and nonwhite individuals are more likely to identify as LGBT, regular/recurring LGBT characters on broadcast and cable networks are are 72% and 71% white, respectively, and overwhelmingly male. It seems likely that onscreen representation reflects the demographics of television creators, not of the television audience.

“Writers pose with their award for outstanding writing for a drama series for “Homeland,” backstage at the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, September 23, 2012. (Photo : Reuters)”

This is unfortunate, because television is our most powerful medium for destructing the ignorance fostered by our segregated country and affirming and empowering the identities of members of minority groups. The latter cause is being tended to reasonably well — thanks to one billion cable channels, it’s possible for women, queer people and people of color to find people like them on TV if they look hard enough. But when we’re talking about changing American hearts and minds, we have to look at how many characters from those groups are showing up on popular network shows with mainstream audiences, and the size and quality of those roles.

Our vice president credited Will & Grace with softening American attitudes towards LGB people and enabling same-sex marriage legislation, and many of us here credit various inclusive television shows with softening our attitudes towards ourselves as LGB people. On the flipside — when Gallup found that people of color, young people, women and people with lower levels of education and income were more likely to ID as LGBT, they noted that these results “run counter to some media stereotypes that portray the LGBT community as predominantly white, highly educated, and very wealthy.” This “positive” stereotype has actually proven legitimately damaging at times — in the Prop 8 trial, it was noted that many Americans don’t think gay people need marriage equality, hate crime protections or non-discrimination laws because according to Mitch and Cam, we’re all doing just fine! Wheee!

this is not actually at all the way that we live

Media stereotypes remain: 56% of the LGBT characters GLAAD found were men. But a full 50% of the broadcast networks’ 46 regular and recurring LGBT characters are female, marking the first time in GLAAD history that females and males have been represented evenly. Quantitatively, this is a huge deal, but looking at the data qualitatively is a bit more complicated.

LGBT Female Characters on TV: The Quality Report 

FYI ten years ago this graphic would’ve been much smaller and twenty years ago it would’ve had one person in it

Queer women have a storied history of settling for less, or settling for subtext, when it comes to seeing ourselves represented on television. We make do with lesbian couples offering tentative pecks while hetero pairs suck face down the hallway and witness even our most celebrated and well-written queer characters see their relationship storylines sidelined while straight romances sit firmly at center stage (I’m lookin’ at you, Pretty Little Liars). Transgender women are rarely, if ever, portrayed on television, and you can count the positive portrayals of trans* women on television on one hand. (Also, they are rarely portrayed by trans* actors.)

Likewise, many of the women counted in this report aren’t necessarily candidates for Grand Marshall of the Northampton Pride Parade. For example, GLAAD promises that “new show Super Fun Night will feature a character named Marika who seems to have a strong attraction for the series lead; her female roommate.” Yup, a show which weekly begs the question “how many fat chick jokes can be squeezed into 22 minutes” will feature a sporty nerdy single lady who “can’t get a man” (that’s the premise of the show, that these three girls can’t get boyfriends) lusting after her straight best friend! How groundbreaking!

Many other characters who count quantitatively fail qualitatively: in Bones, GLAAD notes that “now that [Angela is] happily married to a man, her bisexuality is no longer addressed on the show.” On Mistresses, the relationship between label-free Josslyn and lesbian Alex was obnoxiously sidelined while hetero pairings took center stage — we’ve spent more time watching Josslyn cheat on Alex with a male colleague than seeing the two ladies get together! And while Unique’s inclusion on Glee is commendable as the only transgender woman on primetime television — and a transgender woman of color, at that — the show has dealt her a rotten hand all around (Catfishing, anyone?) and can’t seem to make it through an episode without using at least one unchecked transphobic slur.

Chicago Fire has been acclaimed for its main queer character Leslie Shay, but as a commenter shared in all-caps on our Fall 2013 Television preview, it recently featured a “crazy ex-girlfriend takes revenge through false rape accusation plotline,” which we all know is “the worst plotline in the history of humanity.”  Nor will I be tuning in to misogynistic crap like Two and a Half Men plan to “feature a new regular LGBT character this season when the long-lost bisexual daughter of the former lead will move into her deceased father’s house.” I can sit through a lot of things in order to reach the lesbian parts, but not that. We were promised a new love interest for Kalinda on The Good Wife, but it was announced shortly after the GLAAD report debuted that this new love interest wouldn’t be showing up after all. Excited about that interracial lesbian couple on Under the Dome? Well, one half of that couple, Alice (played by Samantha Mathis), just died of a heart attack.

There’s some good stuff coming up though, too, like Santana’s new love interest on Glee (although her series debut came with an onslaught of biphoba), Callie and Arizona on Grey’s Anatomy (Arizona is now also the only series regular with a disability on ABC) and a promising thing brewing between Detective Gail Peck and Holly on Rookie Blue. Furthermore, Mulan was recently revealed to be bisexual on Once Upon a Time.

infographic via GLAAD

And although cable represents a smaller percentage of female characters compared to male, it’s got most of the good ones, like the lesbian Moms Lena and Stef of The Fosters, two bisexual scientists on Orphan Black, Emily and Paige on Pretty Little Liars, deaf lesbian character Natalie on Switched at Birth, Lost Girl‘s Bo and Lauren and Degrassi’s Fiona and Imogen. It’s also worth mentioning, however, that all the shows I just mentioned are either on ABC Family or imports from Canada or The UK. The best option for LGBT representation remains Orange is the New Black, a Netflix original not included in the GLAAD report.

Racial diversity amongst LGBT characters has been improving gradually, and it’s great to see so many interracial lesbian couples on television — but it would also be nice to see more same-sex female couples where both characters are of color, which happens approximately once in a blue moon (Emily & Maya on Pretty Little Liars, Santana & Dani on Glee, Kima & Sharon on The Wire… who am I missing?).

Alas, gay men still have it better. On network television they’ve got a much-lauded teenage romance and upcoming wedding for Kurt and Blaine on Glee and two huge spotlights for gay dads in Sean Saves the World and the Emmy-favorite Modern Family. Although queer women rock cable w/r/t character quality, queer men far outnumber queer women on cable and cable doesn’t provide the visibility network shows do: The Fosters miraculously pulled in a network high of 2.07 million viewers for its finale, but Modern Family regularly attracts over 12 million viewers a week and is the fourth most popular show on television. Yay for two wealthy white gay men constantly bickering, tricking and passive-aggressively undermining each other every week! (I love the show, but I hate their relationship!) It’s been a long time since we’ve had an entire show to ourselves, but HBO’s Looking, about three gay men in San Francisco, is currently filming for its 2014 debut.

Even though LGB representation isn’t at the levels we want it to be, it remains true that visibility for LGBs, and gay men in particular, has far outpaced that of women, trans* people, people of color and people with disabilities. This is especially remarkable when you consider how few LGB people exist compared to people of color. Regular/recurring LGBT characters on broadcast television has skyrocketed from 1.3% in 2006 to 3.3% in 2013, whereas for many people of color and women, progress has stagnated entirely. Check it out:

I didn’t make a graph about female representation because it has been at 43% for all of the above time periods, which would make a really boring graph. The number of transgender characters per year was too low to show up on the chart (there’s one now, there was one in 2009-2010 and zero in 2006-2007).

When will it get better for everyone?

omg netflix is gonna be airing 567 sexy episodes of “orange is the new black” starting tomorrow! and poussey is gonna come out as gay and then everything is gonna become a unicorn and/or a rainbow!

There are many explanations for this discrepancy in progress, like America is Really Fucking Racist and The Patriarchy, but I suspect a great deal of this can be accounted for by the composition of teams behind-the-scenes: only 26 percent of primetime network TV creators, executive producers, producers, writers, directors, editors and cinematographers are women, only 6.5 percent of TV writers are African-American, and people of color account for a mere 15.6 percent of behind-the-scenes TV employment. Nearly one-third of TV shows have no minority writers on staff and ten percent of TV shows have no women writers on staff. In terms of TV executive producers, women are underrepresented by a factor of more than 2 to 1, people of color at a factor of 5 to 1. The Emmys repeatedly fail to nominate or award people of color in any of its categories.

Hollywood has always been a homosexual haven, so it’s not a huge surprise that many gay characters have managed to evolve past Jodie Dallas while misogynist and racist material goes unchecked every day. Forget about it when it comes to transphobia and transmisogyny — transgender folks have been granted excruciatingly awful television representation throughout all of human history and even shows which aspire to political responsibility (like Glee and The L Word) fuck trans* stuff up. Although there are no numbers on it, I suspect this problem is enabled by a lack of trans* representation behind-the scenes (although Lana Wachowski (who recently produced the totally racist film Cloud Atlas) is working on a 2014 Netflix series called Sense8).

While it’s absolutely true that straight men have brought many gay characters to the screen on shows like Skins and Modern Family, most LGB characters on TV are the work of gay men and/or women (straight and gay). Gay men in particular are well-represented behind-the-scenes of shows that prominently feature gay, lesbian and bisexual characters, like Six Feet Under and True Blood‘s Alan Ball, The Fosters’ Peter Paige, Sex and the City‘s Michael Patrick King and Will & Grace‘s Max Mutchnick. Gay television producer Darren Star created Melrose Place, which featured one of the first gay television kisses ever, as well as gay-inclusive shows Sex and the City, 90210 and GCB. Gay Cuban-American writer Silvio Horta was the head writer, developer and producer for Ugly Betty. Gay showrunner Ryan Murphy is responsible for homo-heavy programs like Nip/Tuck, The New Normal, Glee and American Horror Story. Gay television writer and producer Russell T Davies made the first-ever American show entirely focused on gay men, Queer as Folk, as well as gay-friendly fare like Doctor Who and Casanova.

“Onscreen gay ubiquity has been greatly aided by the growing number of ‘out’ gay people in high places in the industry,” write Lillian Faderman and Stuart Timmons in the epilogue to Gay L.A. They also note that “lesbians have not yet had the same degree of prominence and success as have gay men in behind-the -camera Hollywood.” But they mention pockets of hope, like former HBO president Caroline Strauss. We’ve got lots more behind-the-screen advocates, though: it was Ellen Degeneres who brought us the groundbreaking Ellen and Ilene Chaiken who created The L Word. Comedian Carol Leifer created Rules of Engagement, which included a lesbian character played by Sarah Rue and Marlene King is responsible for the super-gay Pretty Little Liars.

If it’s not an LGB female writer/creator bringing a queer female to the screen, it’s likely to be Ryan Murphy, Alan Ball, Joss Whedon or a straight female writer/creator, such as Grey’s Anatomy‘s Shonda Rhimes and Orange is the New Black‘s Jenji Kohan. Furthermore, despite female underrepresentation behind-the-scenes of other shows, historically most shows with LGB characters of any gender have had a woman heading or co-heading its writing and/or creation, including South of Nowhere, Degrassi, Lost Girl, Bomb Girls, Lip Service, Roseanne, Weeds, The Good Wife, 30 Rock, The Carrie Diaries, Nashville, Girls, Emily Owens M.D., Smash, The Killing, Friends, Nurse Jackie, Mad Men, Awkward, Veronica’s Closet, Ray Donovan and The Masters of Sex.

Which brings me back to why progress seems quicker in some areas than others: White gay men occupy more “influencing” behind-the-scenes television positions than gay women, and thus gay men are more positively and frequently represented on TV than gay women.

Whereas highly stereotyped depictions of gay people have waned in recent years and numbers of gay people appearing in popular shows has increased, progress has stagnated and often reversed for people of color, despite the fact that research has shown that shows with diverse writing staffs and casts fare better in the ratings. In a 2013 study of writing staff diversity for the 2011-2012 TV Season, the only analyzed shows with significant PoC representation (over 35% of the writing team and/or  4+ PoC writers) on staff were BET shows (The Game, Let’s Stay Together, Reed Between The Lines), The Cleveland Show, Single Ladies, Key & Peele, Alphas, Criminal Minds, Family Guy, Grey’s Anatomy, Raising Hope, Nikita and Austin & Ally. That’s 13 shows out of 191. This is how shows like Outsourced even make it to air.

The instant the taboo around gay characters began crumbling, there were plenty of white gay men well-positioned in Hollywood to start telling their own stories; men like Ryan Murphy, Alan Ball, Scott Rudin, David Geffen and Darren Star. This was not the case for gay women, women or people of color when their various rights were allegedly won. Many are still fighting our way in, and it’s difficult when you consider that most showrunners, producers and writers do their time lower on the Hollywood totem pole for many years before being handed the reins themselves — which means our next lesbian television vanguard is probably already working in the industry. Maybe it’ll be Angela Robinson, Rose Troche, Katie Ford, Cherien Dabis or Ali Adler. Maybe it will be one of the ladies already making great television online, like Words With Girls‘ Brittani Nichols, Little Horribles‘ Amy York-Rubin, Unicorn Plan-It‘s Ashley Reed or Roomies‘ Julie Goldman and Brandy Howard. It might be you! Just please G-d, let it not be Ilene Chaiken.

GLAAD’s Studio Responsibility Index On Gay Representation Recalls Last Year’s Awful Movies

With yesterday’s release of the inaugural Studio Responsibility Index, GLAAD confirmed that thing that everyone with eyeballs already knows: LGBT representation is sorely lacking in major Hollywood films. What’s new in this report, however, is solid data and analysis to quantify how bad the problem is. The SRI maps the quantity, quality and diversity of images of LGBT people in films released by the six major motion picture studios during the 2012 calendar year. And let me tell you, it’s not pretty.

Of the 101 films released by the six major studios, not one of the films contained a single transgender character. Only 14 films had lesbian, gay, or bisexual characters represented. And “represented” is a very generous descriptor; the vast majority were no more than cameos or very minor roles.

Of the queer characters in major studio films released in 2012, 84% were white and 56% were male.

Most often, queer representation was included in comedy films. Matt Kane, associate director of entertainment media at GLAAD and lead author of the 2013 SRI pointed out in a phone interview that “LGB characters were brought in mainly to provide humor, either as the butt of the joke or simply to provide the setup for some kind of humorous interaction with another character. They’re not well defined whatsoever, and if you were to take them out of the movie, you wouldn’t notice it whatsoever. ”

As part of the SRI, Kane and his team created the “Vito Russo Test,” a set of criteria inspired by the Bechdel test. Named after GLAAD co-founder and celebrated film historian Vito Russo, these criteria are intended to analyze how LGBT characters are represented in a fictional work.

Just for fun, I took a look at the film list to see how queer women were being represented, and how well they stood up to the Vito Russo test. In all the releases from 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Sony Columbia, Universal Pictures, Walt Disney, and Warner Brothers over past year, there were only five* films with any sort of queer lady representation. Five. Out of 101. Of those, three passed the Vito Russo test.

Here’s the rundown of queer lady film representation, best to worst:

1. Pitch Perfect by Universal: Vito Russo pass

Pitch Perfect sets the stage for queer lady presence early on when an outspoken character named Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) points out the statistical likelihood that one of the 10 members of their all female acapella group is a lesbian. And indeed, queer woman of color Cynthia Rose (Ester Dean) later comes out in a scene where members are sharing secrets with the group:

Cynthia Rose: I have a confession to make.
Fat Amy: We all know where this is going. Lesbi-honest.
Cynthia Rose: This is hard for me to admit to you guys, but for the past two years, I have had a serious gambling problem.
Fat Amy: What?
Beca: What?
Cynthia Rose: It all started when I broke up with my girlfriend.
Fat Amy: Whomp, there it is!

In the hour and 45 minute movie, Cynthia Rose gets a little over an hour of screen time. Bask in the awesomeness. I bet she goes to Phresh Cutz.

Throughout the movie, Cynthia Rose doesn’t have many lines, but one could argue that’s kind of par for the course when there are so many ensemble characters. Cynthia Rose is shown as a competent singer who is well liked by her teammates. She is misgendered in her opening scene (“It’s not a dude”) and is later shown grabbing a teammate’s breasts against her will (possibly accidentally?). Still, I found the portrayal to be overall positive. Everyone in this film gets poked fun at, and I didn’t find Cynthia Rose’s treatment to be more harsh than that of other characters’. It’s situational comedy, more or less, where you’re laughing at misunderstandings, not at her queerness — in short, her identity isn’t the punchline of a joke.

2. The Five Year Engagement by Universal: Vito Russo pass

The Five Year Engagement was well rated by GLAAD for its inclusion of Chef Sally (Lauren Weedman). According to the report:

Among the supporting cast of this comedy about a straight couple’s prolonged route to the altar is lesbian chef Sally, who is the boss of the male lead. Though her role was limited to just a few scenes, the film established Sally as a unique and humorous character defined by traits beyond her sexual orientation and eventually depicted her in a relationship with another woman. For such a minor character, her inclusion was well handled.

Chef Sally was in four scenes of the two hour movie, racking up 6 minutes and 21 seconds of screen time.

Chef Sally is one of those quirky, romantic-comedy characters that exist only in films (and maybe your/my fantasies about what your life would look like if it were a film). Chef Sally first appears in the middle of the main couple’s proposal and makes a Star Trek reference. Then she chastises herself for being awkward. She has strong political opinions, and keeps her authoritative presence even after accidentally chopping off one of her fingers. (“I need a doggie bag for my finger,” she barks out to the kitchen.) I didn’t find a single negative thing about her portrayal, and she even worked a joke about gay marriage into a scene about the male lead and his career.

3. Fun Size by Paramount Pictures: Vito Russo pass

Within the first five minutes of the film, this gem takes place between the main character and her best friend as they discuss Halloween costumes:

April: So which do you think, sexy kitty or sexy mouse?
Wren: Can’t you be a kitty without being sexy?
April: Um, no. Being sexy is what’s going to get us into Aaron Riley’s party tonight.

They then proceed to spend the next hour or so obsessing over Aaron Riley, going to Aaron Riley’s party, and what actions they should take or avoid to be cool enough to be in Aaron Riley’s presence. There’s no mistaking this for a feminist film, or any sort of positive influence in the lives of the tween girls this film was marketed to. But there was a lesbian couple depicted, at least!

Out of an hour and twenty minutes, these lesbian moms were part of the action for 4 minutes and 35 seconds.

Barb (Kerry Kenney) and Jackie (Ana Gasteyer) are the wacky lesbian moms raising Roosevelt, the awkward eventual love interest of main character Wren. In the opening scene, the moms sit on the floor, serenading their cat Tolstoy with a lute and wooden flute. They speak ancient Greek with their son, and tell Wren about their expertise in prenatal psychology. Certainly the movie is working in some stereotypes about lesbian hippie-dom as well as some general wackiness. However, they are shown as loving parents in both of the scenes they’re in. As noted in the SRI, “The stereotype of the new-age lesbian parents as a source of humor has become something of a comedy archetype unfortunately, but at least the joke here doesn’t lie in the couple’s sexual orientation.”

4. American Reunion by Universal: Vito Russo fail

There’s a lot of misogyny in American Reunion. But I imagine you all have at least some familiarity with the American Pie franchise, so I won’t dig into it except to say that there was an extended gag in this particular movie about adult men wanting to get with drunk high school chicks. Moving on.

Surprisingly, I actually found American Reunion to be (relatively) progressive in its depiction of queer characters. In one scene, bro-tastic homophobe Stifler is reunited with two former classmates who are now engaged to each other. When the two men reveal to him that half the lacrosse team was gay, it is Stifler’s dumbfounded look (and the couple’s smirking quip about “wrestling” in the locker room) that is the punchline. The same sex relationship is presented as perfectly normal, and the couple even kisses in the background of a later scene.

Towards the end of the movie, the returning character of Jessica (Natasha Lyonne) appears briefly to come out as a lesbian and introduce her girlfriend, Ingrid (Jen Kober). Their sole purpose appears to be getting one of the male leads over to a table to patch things up with his female love interest.

Although it’s neat that Natasha Lyonne played gay yet again, out of a nearly 2 hour movie, this lesbian couple got 42 seconds of screen time.

5. Katy Perry: Part of Me by Paramount Pictures; Vito Russo fail

It is true that Katy Perry: Part of Me has a few queer women in it. But honestly, I feel like it barely counts as representation. In one clip, singer Jessie J says one sentence about what a big star Katy Perry is (9 seconds). Lady Gaga also makes a brief appearance in a costume “like a Hershey’s kiss” that obscures her face (5 seconds). Ellen DeGeneres snags the longest scene (31 seconds) with a clip from her show in which Katy gets jokingly territorial with Ellen that Russell Brand is hers. It’s mostly B roll, though, and you barely see Ellen’s face. Beyond that, Katy Perry’s gay stylist and makeup artist is shown several times throughout the film. And that’s it.

In total, queer women get less than 45 seconds of this hour and a half long film. Obviously, this is not long enough to discuss “Ur So Gay,” “I Kissed A Girl and I Liked It,” or Katy’s hot and cold relationship with the LGBT community.

Overall, I thought that when films bothered to show queer women at all, the representation wasn’t bad. The major problem right now is just that there’s so little of it. Of the five films with queer lady content above, you’ll note that two come from Paramount Pictures, and three from Universal Pictures. From 20th Century Fox, Sony Columbia, Walt Disney, and Warner Brothers: nada.

Combined, the six major studios were responsible for 76.4 percent of U.S. theatrical releases in 2012, and close to $7.7 billion gross box office revenue. Obviously, these studios have a huge impact on what’s available (and commercially successful) in the marketplace. When they fail to include LGBT people in their offerings, what it means is that unless someone is specifically looking for LGBT characters, they may never encounter them.

Despite popular belief, lesbians don’t spend all of their time huddled in menstrual huts discussing their hatred of men. Queer women go to the grocery store, walk their dogs, vote, attend sporting events, and eat in public restaurants, just like everyone else. Even if films featuring queer women at the center of attention is too much to ask, at the very least, there are queer people in the background of most straight people’s lives. It’s bizarre, inaccurate and insulting that this reality is not reflected on film.

The 2013 SRI explains:

Going to the movies is part of the American mythos and identity, and the stories they tell can have a deep and lasting effect on our cultural psyche. When minority characters are marginalized or made invisible within these films, it not only reminds those being underrepresented that their social position is less than, but also makes it more difficult for the majority to see them as part of that film’s reality as well as a valid part of our own.

In years past, GLAAD has released the annual Network Responsibility Index, which analyzes the quantity and quality of LGBT characters on primetime television. Over the past several years, there has been dramatic improvement, in part because of GLAAD’s advocacy efforts during direct discussion with the studios. According to Matt Kane, GLAAD is already in talks with two of the major film studios listed in the SRI (“one of the ones that did comparably well compared to the others, and one that did not”), and they are setting up further discussion with them and with others.

Kane said,

This [report] is us trying to start a conversation that we intend to continue for some time. We know that this is not something that’s going to get fixed overnight, but we’re in it for the long haul. We know the studios can do better and we think it’s in their best interests, for a number of reasons, to do better. That’s something we want to communicate to them over time.

Realistically, the first effects of this first report are unlikely to hit in time for the 2014 SRI, possibly even the 2015 SRI. But, come on – if we’re counting that Katy Perry movie as a win, the bar is obviously set really, really low. It can only get better from here, right?

Your move, studios.

*Adam Sandler’s That’s My Boy by Sony Columbia includes a shot of two female exotic dancers making out with each other. However, there is no mention of queer identity, the film doesn’t pass the Russo test or the Bechdel test, and it uses the words “homos” and “faggot” as humorous insults. So I’m not counting it on this list.

VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Beth Ditto Being Fabulous at the GLAAD Awards LA 2013

It’s a given that we’re all collectively in love with Beth Ditto – outspoken member of the LGBTQ community, feminist, style icon, and rockstar frontwoman of Gossip – yes? Excellent, then we can all gather round our computer screens and watch this video exclusive of Ditto’s speech at the 2013 Los Angeles GLAAD Awards and be happy and excited together!

If you need any more incentive to watch this speech, you should know it includes a funny anecdote about Mr. Bill Clinton, an empowering disregard for rules and prompters, and an adorable, giddy mention of Ditto’s wedding plans with fiance, Kristin Ogata! So many awesome feelings.

“And I’d like to say that I’m very in love with my girlfriend and have always wanted to get married, and we are getting married, because we are ready, because the United States of America is ready.”

And that’s that. If Beth Ditto says it’s true, then you better believe it.

Ugh so cute.

kristin ogata and beth ditto Photo by Earl Gibson III/Getty Images

GLAAD Awards Los Angeles 2013: Carly & Robin Do the Red Carpet and We Do This Show

Carly and I attended the 24th Annual GLAAD Awards Red Carpet in Los Angeles this past weekend and were so excited to be there representing Autostraddle, which has been nominated for its own GLAAD award for “Outstanding Blog.” We talked to attendees and honorees alike, most notably, bad-ass queer Beth Ditto.

Check out some of our red carpet photos and interviews, and then the rest of the team will brief you on the show itself, in which lots of people won awards such as Bill Clinton, who received the inaugural Advocate for Change Award from his daughter Chelsea Clinton.

Carlytron on the Red Carpet

Fortune Feimster

photo by robin roemer

Carly: What was your fashion inspiration when getting dressed tonight?
Fortune: Um, lesbian. I was like, how can I look like a big ol’ lesbian? I just picked up my cardigan and tie and I was done. I was doing an interview and they asked us ‘who we were wearing?’ I was like, uh, the Gap. I don’t want to brag or anything, but that’s who I’m wearing.
Carly: Great tees. Great tees, guys, they’re very comfortable. Why do you think it’s so important that organizations like GLAAD exist?
Fortune: It’s important for me personally, because I wouldn’t be on television otherwise, you know. I feel like they’ve really paved the way to make it okay for people who are gay to be out in the media and they make it acceptable for other people to appreciate it who aren’t exposed to gay people. And you know, our show is very gay-friendly and we have gay people on staff, so teaming up and supporting this sort of organization is a good fit, because we both have a similar cause. Equality. All that good stuff.

Naya Rivera

photo by robin roemer

Maria Menounos

photo by robin roemer

 Hal Sparks

photo by robin roemer

Ted Danson & Mary Steenburgen

photo by robin roemer

Alex Newell

photo by robin roemer

Peter Paige

photo by robin roemer

Andrew Rannells

Remember back in 2004 when Andrew Rannells wasn’t a Huge Deal yet, like he is now because of The New Normal and Girls, and he was playing Dana Fairbanks’ beard and tennis partner? Oh, the memories. Oops, not true, actually — different guy.

photos by robin roemer

Teri Polo and Sherri Saum

photo by robin roemer

Chef K & Brittany

Much like our design director, Chef K (who you hopefully recognize from The Taste, but might also recognize from being Miss June 2012 Francine‘s girlfriend on The Real L Word) only dates Autostraddle Calendar Girls. Here she is with Brittany Weiner, Miss July 2013:

photo by robin roemer

Cori & Kacy

There is always a place in our heart for these two. Always.

Kacy Boccumini: We’re here for Jen Tyrrell. The Boy Scout den mother. The lesbian den mother. That’s who we’re here to support. Also, The Real L World, but tangential to, you know, equality.
Carly: We’re equality over reality television right now.
Kacy: Completely!
Cori Boccumini: High five.
Kacy: High five. Every day of the week.
Carly: So, what else is going on right now with you guys? What’s going on?
Cori: Just normal, boring stuff.
Kacy: You know, Jonesy’s still hanging out, still a cat. Still not pregnant, you know. Same old stuff. And we’re always crying. Always. Crying.
Cori: And we do talk about sperm.
Kacy: A lot.
Cori: Still.
Kacy: All the time.
Cori: We do it all day.
Kacy: Just ‘cuz.
Carly: It’s a good thing to talk about. If you’re not talking about it, who’s going to be?
Kacy: Nikki and Jill?

Beth Ditto

Check out our interview with Beth Ditto!

Beth Ditto Knows What’s Up – LA GLAAD Awards 4/20/13 from autostraddle on Vimeo.

Carly: What are you listening to right now, like what new albums are rocking your world?
Beth Ditto: My girlfriend and I — well, she’s obsessed — but we’ve been listening to the new Lil Wayne, a lot of Kendrick Lamar, Alabama Shakes. What else? Oh, the new Knife record.
Carly: Oh my god. Oh… my god.
Beth: Come on! I just love that, it’s like… feminist electro? Radical electro? It’s fucking brave. I got chills thinking about it.

Jane Espenson

photo by robin roemer

Wilson Cruz

photo by robin roemer

Unfortunately, some of the big names at the GLAAD Awards this year didn’t make it to the carpet (or to our end of the carpet), but attending the awards were attractive and interesting humans like Bill Clinton and Betty White…

photo via glaad

…Leonardo DiCaprio and Charlize Theron…

photo via glaad

…Kristen Dunst…

photo via glaad

…Sara Ramirez…

photo via glaad

….Jennifer Lawrence and Darren Criss (obviously they’re best friends now, right?)…

photo via glaad

…Jenny Boylan (author of She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders)…

photo via glaad

…and Drew Barrymore, who hosted the show!

photo via glaad

NEXT: Videos from the show!

GLAAD Awards NYC 2013: Madonna, Degrassi Lesbians, and Trans* Representation

As a team, we’ve been extra excited about the GLAAD Media Awards this year because for the first time ever, Autostraddle dot com is nominated! However, my own personal excitement about the award shows went through the roof when Laneia emailed me and inquired if I would like to attend the NYC show to photograph our very own lovely Lizz interviewing celebs on the red carpet. Would I like to do that? Hello, did Tumblr crash when Quintana finally happened? Which is to say yes, yes I would like that very much.

So Lizz traveled all the way from Med School Land to my humble abode in Brooklyn, and on Saturday afternoon we trekked off on our journey to find Madonna, befriend power lesbians and bring you the best and the brightest coverage from one of three shows GLAAD puts on to celebrate the year in LGBT media. Are you ready for this? Cuz we sure weren’t!

we were really really excited and also totally petrified

Neither Lizz nor I had ever attended an awards show before, so we had no idea what to expect. We learned lots of things over the course of the night: If you act like you know what you’re doing people will believe you (and will let you check your coat in the fancy coat room that may or may not have been legit for us to use), a lot of people on the GLAAD staff read Autostraddle, and even at LGBT events, The Patriarchy can totally still plague you in the form of random white dudes who will take up space and try to steal your interviews. Life is so educational! Anyhow, the 2013 NYC GLAAD Media Awards were really fun, and we felt super honored to attend and get the chance to chat with a lot of really influential humans in the LGBT community and media world. Mr. Anderson Silver Fox Cooper didn’t grant interviews and Madonna didn’t even show up on the red carpet, but we did get to chat with a lot of really badass humans, and we took photos with a bunch of them too!

First we spoke with Jennifer Tyrrell, the lesbian mom who started a petition after being removed from her role as a Boy Scouts troop leader because of the BSA’s ban on homosexuals. We spoke with Tyrrell last summer and she was really sincere and inspiring, so we were psyched to get a chance to catch up with her almost a year later, as the BSA still hasn’t come to a satisfying decision. We complimented her snazzy rainbow tie and her sons’ adorable bowties (they were supposed to wear matching rainbow ties too, but the ones Tyrrell ordered never arrived in the mail!) then asked her what she thinks the future looks like for the Boy Scouts of America.

It’s so hard to predict because the BSA has been an institution in America for 100 years and unfortunately it has been run by good old boy type attitudes…I’ve been heartbroken so many times by their constant upset. I’m going to assume that if they don’t make the right decision in May, there are going to be a lot of upset people. I really think it’s going to be chaos for them. We’re going to keep working, I’m not going anywhere until everyone is accepted…I don’t want any kid to go through what Cruz has been through, so that’s whats gotta be done. Truthfully, I think you can’t train the leaders of our future with values and bigotry from a 100 years ago. It just doesn’t work.

later in the evening jen gave lizz an inspirational pep talk and assured her she wouldn’t die alone so basically jen is the sweetest
copyright vanessa friedman

Then we found Wilson Cruz, aka Rickie from My So-Called Life, and he totally referred to us as “his girls.” Yes, we did die of excitement, obviously.

so like what is angela chase up to these days, just wondering?
copyright vanessa friedman

Cruz shared his “stuff I’m excited about tonight” list with us and it included Madonna and Anderson Cooper tied in first place, with a performance by Jake Spears of the Scissor Sisters and meeting Melissa Harris-Perry coming in a close second. He admitted he’s “obsessed” with MHP and we agreed, then Lizz requested that he ask someone if Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Perry could have hour long shows back to back on teevee because that would be a dreamworld. Cruz promised he’d ask MHP about is ASAP. Cruz also has a new movie coming out, Meth Head, that is currently making the rounds at festivals. We asked why he feels it’s an important movie for the LGBTQ community.

Meth Head stars Lukas Haas, and I play his very long-suffering partner as he goes through a pretty traumatic meth addiction. I think Meth Head is important because we have a really huge problem in the LGBT community in regards to meth, and this film is really an opportunity to have a conversation about it and how horrible a drug it is, and not just horrible for the person who has the addiction, but for the people it affects around that person. That’s why it’s important to me.

And also what it was like preparing for his role in the film:

Preparing for the film, I was reliving an emotional process. I actually dated someone who had a meth addiction, so I walked through a personal experience in a cathartic way… it was very much like my experience preparing for My So-Called Life.

I let out an audible squeal when Jazz and her family walked down the carpet — in case you don’t know, Jazz is a 12-year-old trans* girl, and honorary co-founder of the Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation (her parents are the founders), the youngest person ever to be recognized in The Advocate’s “Top Forty Under 40” annual list, and the star of OWN’s I Am Jazz: A Family in Transition. Jazz was so sweet and wise, and while 12-year-old-me would’ve completely freaked out under the bright lights and pushy reporters, Jazz was calm and composed, telling us about her dress (“It’s actually a tutu and then a little tube top, it’s from this store called Teen Angel,”) and admitting to be just as excited as I was about the Jersey Shore cast members present at the event (we’ll get to Snooki and JWoww in a moment).

Jazz, age 12
copyright vanessa friedman

We asked Jazz how it felt to be a role model to so many humans at such a young age — “To me, the age doesn’t matter, just how you feel inside,” — and if she enjoys big media events like the GLAAD awards — “It’s overwhelming, but a lot of fun too. I like taking pictures, so.” Jazz’s family walked the red carpet with her, and we asked her mom, Jeanette, what advice she would give to parents’ of trans* kids. “They need to remember unconditional love is the most important thing. They need to check their egos at the door and put their child first.”

Next: Laverne Cox, Milla Jovovich, Mama June Shannon, Russell Simmons and more!

Spirit Day Gallery: 50 Ways Of Feeling Smokin’ Hot In Purple

Today is Spirit Day, a GLAAD-sponsored situation via which millions of human beings wear purple to show their solidarity with LGBT teens and their desire for LGBT teens to be accepted/loved rather than beat up, teased and destroyed. You can learn more and go purple on the glaad website:

Millions wear purple on Spirit Day as a sign of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth and to speak out against bullying. Spirit Day was started in 2010 as a response to the young people who had taken their own lives. Observed annually, individuals, schools, organizations, corporations, media professionals and celebrities wear purple, which symbolizes spirit on the rainbow flag. Getting involved is easy — participants are asked to simply “go purple” on October 19th as we work to create a world in which LGBT teens are celebrated and accepted for who they are. Learn more & go purple at www.glaad.org/spiritday.

Especially heartwarming is the Spirit Day Ambassadors Page, which features young activists like Katy Butler as well as high-profile and very attractive celebrities including actress Dianna Agron, transgender writer/activist Janet Mock and actress Shay Mitchell.

In honor of this esteemed holiday, we have collected a lovely gallery of hot girls wearing purple in some capacity. Perhaps this will provide you with fashion inspiration for anybody planning on leaving the house today. (A * next to a photo caption means the subject(s) of the photo are queer)

We’ve gone purple on our twitter today and you should too. Let us know how your Spirit Day is going and how you feel about Whitney Houston’s amazing purple puffy jacket in the comments!!

GLAAD Awards 2012: May The Odds Be Ever In Your Gayvor

Saturday night fellow Words With Girls person Lauren Neal accompanied me to the Ellen DeGeneres-hosted 23rd Annual GLAAD Media Awards, Los Angeles edition, where we worked the red carpet (video to come!), ate a lot of rolls, and tweeted frequently.

Dressing for this event was a special treat because my wardrobe is focused around the premise of being comfortable, and award show wardrobes are generally focused around the premise of looking good. This is how that went:

This was my first trip to the GLAAD Awards and I noticed that the presenter-to-award ratio is horribly askew and that nobody made any GLAAD/glad puns (probably used those up during the inaugural show). Naya Rivera did not host which might be my life’s greatest tragedy, but nevertheless, a fantastic time was had by all.

Also, Ellen DeGeneres did host and everybody loves Ellen and she came out dancing. Ellen Degeneres opened the show… much like she opened the minds of minds across America! Awwwww.

“Betty White is here. I didn’t know you were gay. Welcome sister.” – Ellen

Jason Mraz was slated to perform but couldn’t because he’s sick. This doesn’t surprise me as he looks like he’s been hanging out with feral cats. In lieu of a performance, he spoke about being bullied as a kid and having gay besties.

“Some of my best friends are L, G, T. I skipped B because I think all people have the potential to be B.” – Jason Mraz

Herndon Graddick took to the stage to testify as GLAAD’s newly appointed president. It was pretty cool. He cursed a lot in his speech so I think he should run their Twitter account.

“It’s 2012. We’re sick of this shit.” – Herndon Graddick

Then Jennifer Tyrrell told the touching story of being removed as den leader of her son’s Boy Scout troop and everybody cried a lot. I was really hungry at that point and was wondering why Boy Scouts didn’t make cookies, but it was also really moving and important.

“I don’t know why people are interested in same sex marriage. I’ve been having the same sex in my marriage for 30 years and it’s really fucking boring.” – Lisa Vanderpump

Modern Family continued their domination of any and every award show by taking home the award for Outstanding Comedy Series. Jesse Tyler Ferguson accepted the award from the cast of Hot in Cleveland. He seemed pretty excited about meeting Betty White. I think he enjoyed the award as well but I don’t think it was his top priority. Drop Dead Diva‘s “Prom”  (which was based on the Constance McMillen situation, apparently) and Hot in Cleveland’s “Beards” tied for Outstanding Individual Episode. This tie made me curious about their voting process but not curious enough to actually look it up. Beginners won Outstanding Film – Wide Release.

Molly Shannon did an Angelina Jolie tribute by showing us her leg and undies, Sara Gilbert wore silver pants, and the opening montage included about .2 seconds of Pariah, which is not enough.

The Kolzak Award is presented to an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting equality and this year the winner was Chaz Bono. I think by the end of the night I’d seen the entire documentary.

During Chaz Bono‘s introduction, Cher made a surprise appearance. Cher is one of those people that doesn’t sound like an actual person. She sounds like an imitation of someone doing a Cher imitation. It’s really weird. Also, she’s rocking a giant fro these days, although I suppose she could’ve been rocking a giant ‘fro for a while now, but I don’t really keep up with Cher’s day-to-day.

Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images North America

“My pronouns for my child just jump all over the fucking place.” -Cher

Josh Hutcherson from The Hunger Games received the Vanguard Award from GLAAD and the Perfect Person Award from me. The Vanguard Award is given to media professionals who have increased the visibility and understanding of the LGBT community. The Perfect Person Award is given to whomever I decide to call a perfect person. I have given myself this award many times so Josh is in good company. He is the youngest recipient of both awards.

Hutcherson, who is the co-founder of advocacy group Straight But Not Narrow, lost his two gay uncles to AIDS and has been outspoken on the issue of LGBT equality for as long as he’s been in the public eye.

Other people in attendance included Portia de Rossi, Sara Gilbert, Linda Perry, Kim Wayans, Molly Shannon, Max Adler, Joshua Jackson, Milla Jovovich, Benicio del Toro, Ali Larter, Michelle Paradise and Grant Gustin.

UPI/Jim Ruymen

Here are our photos from the Red Carpet:

Max Adler and Tabatha Coffey

Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack and Chaz Bono

Kim Wayans

Lauren is really close to Peeta in this photo

Milla Jovovich

Joshua Jackson

us!

The Glorious GLAAD Media Awards Happened In New York City, Was “Happening”

This Saturday night in New York City, all the stars of earth, stage and screen aligned for a magical evening celebrating homosexuality and other glorious aspects of the LGBTQ experience. It was called The Glaad Media Awards!

The evening was hosted by Naya Rivera and Cory Monteith, who play Santana Lopez and Finn Fucking Hudson on everybody’s favorite television program, Glee! If you’re not familiar with Glee, the important thing to know is that Santana Lopez is the lesbian, and we all love her, and Finn Fucking Hudson is a talent-free potato sack, and we hate him.

Dancing With the Stars, which featured trans megastar Chaz Bono and homosexual galaxy smasher Carson Kressley this year, won Outstanding Reality Program. Pariah, which should’ve also won an Oscar but did not Because Of The Patriarchy, was rewarded with “Outstanding Film – Limited Release.” I’ve been looking into becoming a limited release myself.

Katy Butler, the delightful teenager from Ann Arbor, Michigan (my hometown!) who campaigned for the MPAA to change the rating on the documentary Bully so that the kids it’s about could actually see it, snagged The Special Recognition Award, and Zach Wahls, the child of two lesbian Moms whose impassioned plea for marriage equality at the Iowa House for Representatives went massively viral last year, gave a Special Presentation. I bet it involved magic tricks!

Bernadette Peters presented the Vito Russo Award to Broadway and “Smash” producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron. The Vito Russo Award honors “an openly LGBT media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting LGBT equality.” Also, our friend Mombian won for best blog! Isn’t that nice?

via fuckyeahmeganhilty.tumblr.com

The most important thing that happened all night long was when somebody paid $5,000 to kiss Naya Rivera — personally, I would’ve paid $5,000 to have Naya Rivera and Heather Morris kiss each other more often on the teevee, but that wasn’t up for sale.

Nor was the $15,000 towards punching Finn Hudson in the face on the auction block, but it was there for kissing Cory Monteith. Other people who sold their lips for money include: John Stamos.

Other things that got awards include Ricky Martin, Battle Against Bullying and this article from The Boston Globe.

Other people who were there include: Dakota Fanning (Runaways, Twilight); hip hop icon Russell Simmons; Megan Hilty (Smash); Padma Lakshmi (Top Chef); Adepero Oduye and Kim Wayans (Pariah); Olympic figure skater Johnny Weir, Tracey Gold(Starving Secrets with Tracey Gold); Laverne Cox (Musical Chairs); Jay Manuel and Isis King (America’s Next Top Model).

hey there, romeo

At the end of the ceremony, everyone felt really happy.

GLAAD Plotting To Hold Maggie Gallagher, Tony Perkins, Other Bigots Accountable

Sometimes, it’s harder than you might think to keep track of whether someone is a hugely offensive and insane anti-gay bigot. Although it may seem obvious to us that Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, and Tony Perkins are prejudiced blowhards whose insight on issues like gay marriage is limited to their sincere desire to restrict the rights of their fellow citizens, but to those who don’t follow gay issues in the media as closely as our community tends to, they can seem like completely legitimate commentators, albeit on the conservative end of the spectrum.

this is all that most people know about tony perkins

Which is why GLAAD has undertaken the Commentator Accountability Project, which is trying to make sure that the mainstream media understands they aren’t impartial “experts” to be consulted on gay marriage any more than Fred Phelps is. People like Tony Perkins have little to no professional credentials, yet as Queerty points out, are often booked on middling-to-legitimate talk shows to give opinions like “They say the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a risk to children.”

To those who are concerned with gay issues in the media and in their own lives, the assertion that “the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a risk to children” is immediately suspect — what research? Whose children? What does “posing a risk” mean, exactly? But when Tony Perkins said that on Hardball, no one asked those questions. Because, as GLAAD puts it, “journalists or producers who are on deadline often don’t have the time to dig into the histories of a commentator,” which means that both media figures and their audiences can remain unaware that the supposed “facts” they’re getting about the gay community came, in that instance, from the American College of Pediatricians, who don’t produce peer-reviewed research and who count George Rekers among their chief researchers. People who are watching Tony Perkins on Hardball don’t necessarily know that his group, the Family Research Council, also supports the Day of Truth, a response to the Day of Silence in which queer high schoolers are informed of the sinfulness of their identities, or that Perkins has also claimed that there’s no link between anti-gay attitudes and queer teen suicides.

To combat this, GLAAD aims to make the full picture on each of the commentators listed on their website available to journalists and media professionals, so that they have no excuse to not know whose opinion they’re soliciting on issues that affect the queer community. (They also ask that if you see any of their targeted commentators in your local media, you contact GLAAD via the CAP website.) GLAAD’s Aaron McQuade notes that “‘accountability’ does not necessarily mean keeping these people out of the media. But if a reporter is interviewing someone who insinuates that his or her political opponent is controlled by the devil, it’s the reporter’s journalistic responsibility to put that person’s opinion in perspective.” And accountability doesn’t just apply to the journalists involved; it’s also a way of holding people like Maggie Gallagher accountable for their actions. Following the discussion of gay issues in the media reveals that there’s a shocking amount of completely baseless claims one can make about gay people with little to no consequences except, of course, setting back the public perception of queer people every time they’re allowed airtime.  Wouldn’t it be nice if they at least had to be honest about that?

Searching For A F*ck To Give About Kirk Cameron’s Anti-Gay Comments

So in the 80’s they used to make these young adult novel versions of popular television shows — they probably still do this now, I guess — and although my Mom wouldn’t let me watch those popular television shows or, really, read those novels, somehow a copy of a Growing Pains novel ended up in my 3rd grade classroom and I read it. More specifically: I read it about 500 times. It was the first thing I’d ever read about teenagers (maybe) having sex and it blew my mind.

the cast of Growing Pains

Before I get into this Novel Experience, a brief intro to the show in general: Growing Pains was a mega-popular sitcom that aired from 1985-1992 on ABC about an affluent Long Island family: work-from-home psychiatrist Dad Jason Seaver (Alan Thicke), journalist Mom Maggie (Joanna Kerns), rascally heartthrob Mike (Kirk Cameron), super-smart studious Carol (Tracey Gold) and “rambunctious” Ben (Jeremy Miller). For two years, Leonardo DiCaprio played a recurring role as a homeless boy taken in by The Seavers.

Kirk Cameron with Leonardo DiCaprio

So, the chapter I liked, which I assume was based on an episode, involved Mike hooking up with a girl. I think. Specifics escape me now but the girl was somehow special and intimidating, like she was older or super-hot or more experienced, maybe? I distinctly remember that it ended with her leaving the house and Mike walking down the stairs and telling Ben that he needed to take “a cold shower,” which I thought meant he’d just had sex but I now realize meant he’d just NOT had sex.

It’s funny, considering what Kirk Cameron has become, that my strongest association with his existence was that sexual-innuendo-packed teen novelization-of-a-sitcom. See, Kirk Cameron was an atheist when he first joined the cast of Growing Pains. At 17, he became a born-again Christian (one who would’ve strongly opposed storylines involving sex or cold showers). Now he’s a full-time Evangelical.

He’s been in the news this week because on March 2nd, Cameron appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan show and was asked for his opinion on same-sex marriage. His answer:

“I think that it’s – it’s – it’s unnatural. I think that it’s – it’s detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization. Marriage is almost as old as dirt, and it was defined in the garden between Adam and Eve. One man, one woman for life till death do you part. So I would never attempt to try to redefine marriage. And I don’t think anyone else should either. So do I support the idea of gay marriage? No, I don’t.”

Since that night I’ve been getting a lot of emails from GLAAD about Kirk Cameron, and I’ve been seeing a lot of Kirk Cameron articles on my Google Reader and I’ve seen lots of my Facebook Friends recanting their childhood crushes on Kirk Cameron and expressing public remorse regarding their teenaged investment in multiple copies of his Tiger Beat centerfold.

GLAAD is asking its supporters to sign a petition to tell Kirk Cameron that he’s no longer your idol. From its email call to action:

Kirk Cameron joins former TV stars Victoria Jackson and Chuck Norris in desperately trying to remain in the public eye by using anti-LGBT rhetoric…

While Cameron is using his platform to speak out against gay people, his ‘Growing Pains’ co-stars including Leonardo Dicaprio, Brad Pitt and Hilary Swank have spoken out for LGBT equality and are enjoying critically successful careers. Joanna Kerns, who played Cameron’s mom on ‘Growing Pains’ also co-starred in the cult hit ‘All Over The Guy’ as the mother of a gay man.

Today’s teen idols are also standing up for equality in America. Aziz Ansari, Chris Colfer, Miley Cyrus, Hilary Duff, Dakota Fanning, Zac Efron, Josh Hutcherson, Kristen Stewart, and many more have all spoken out in support of LGBT people.

Furthermore:

“In this interview, Kirk Cameron sounds even more dated than his 1980s TV character,” said Herndon Graddick, Senior Director of Programs at GLAAD. “Cameron is out of step with a growing majority of Americans, particularly people of faith who believe that their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters should be loved and accepted based on their character and not condemned because of their sexual orientation.”

Piers Morgan disagreed with Cameron when asked what he would do if one of his kids came out. Morgan said: “If one of my sons [came out], I’d say ‘that’s great son, as long as you’re happy.'”

Yet despite all this hullabaloo and the obviously inexcusable nature of Cameron’s comments, I can’t seem to summon a fuck to give about this. See, anyone who spent inordinate amounts of time channel-flipping in the early ’00s (Cameron was often on the Christian channel preaching about things) is aware that Kirk Cameron’s mainstream acting career, rather than being a life-defining experience, was a thing he did as a kid before going on to doing what he really cares about, which is “sharing the gospel with teenagers, intellectuals, atheists, Moslems, Jews, Cults, backsliders, and the self righteous.”

Cameron is currently married to actress Chelsea Noble, who played his girlfriend on the show. 

In other words: I really doubt Cameron gives a fuck about whether or not he’s still your teen idol!

(It’s also a strange strategy for a GLBTQ organization — asking gay men and women to redact their crushes on a straight man?)

When Cameron became a born-again Christian, he became a bit of a pain in the ass on the set of Growing Pains, refusing to do any storylines that were against his faith, like insisting on removing any suggestion of pre-marital sex. Cameron also pushed producers to fire Julie McCullough, an actress hired to play the nanny, because Cameron objected to her having posed nude in Playboy. (Meanwhile, his cast-mate Tracey Gold was suffering from severe anorexia nervosa, an issue she has spoken out about many times since.)

After Growing Pains, from which Cameron banked over 50K a week, he did more film and television work, such as Like Father Like Son and Listen To Me and eventually his own sitcom, Kirk. In Kirk, Cameron played a “graphical designer” and former “mischievous screw-up” forced to move home and care for his three younger siblings after their parents moved to Europe. It aired for two seasons on the WB in 1995 and 1996.

He pretty much left mainstream film and television after that, besides doing Growing Pains movies in 2000 and 2004, and appearing on Larry King Live with the cast in 2006 when the series was released on DVD.

He’s now devoted himself entirely to spreading his interpretation of the “word of God” and starring in Christian movies like Left Behind: The Movie. He’s the co-host, along with evangelist Ray Comfort, of an unintentionally hilarious Evangelical program called The Way of the Master, in which Comfort and his “team” wear matching polo shirts and annoy innocent people on the street with The Gospel.

Cameron even wrote a book about his journey, “From Fame to Faith,” and here is the video from his Good Morning America appearance promoting that book:

Cameron doesn’t believe in science or evolution, which is why he participates in fantastic stunts like distributing an annotated/edited/revamped version of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species on college campuses — a version which promoted Cameron and Comfort’s creationist agenda. He also tours the country talking about marriage and how to save it from “the pain and brokenness we see in homes today.”

Cameron’s latest kick is Conservative political action centered around his new film, Monumental, which describes how his vaycay to Plymouth Rock really brought him back to America’s religious roots, hammering home the fact that “the meaning of separation of church and state has lost its original meaning. It’s now a codeword for secularizing the state.”

So was anybody surprised by his comments to Piers Morgan? Like any religious zealot you ask about gay people on television, you know the answer’s gonna be homophobic and irritating before you ask it.  Just last year, The Advocate described Kirk as “an outspoken opponent of gay rights.” (Although his similarly religious sister, Candace, who I was in love with when she played DJ Tanner on Full House, did sit down for an interview with Perez Hilton, which mens she probs hates gays less than Kirk does.) Kirk has shared his anti-gay views on television before, like during this 2008 Bill O’Reilly appearance:

Although GLAAD has successfully obtained apologies from celebrities like Tracy Morgan and Adam Corolla for offensive things they said publicly about LGBT people, there’s not a chance in hell Kirk Cameron, like any religious zealot, is gonna listen to GLAAD’s mating call. So I guess my question is — is Cameron really worth our time right now?  Certainly it’s always good to raise awareness, I can’t argue with that. What do you think?

I remain undecided, but I’ve recently acquired new feelings about that Piers Morgan fellow. See — last night, according to Gawker, “TMZ ambushed Piers Morgan to ask about his thoughts on Cameron’s statements. Using what was maybe not the best word choice, Morgan called Cameron’s strict adherence to his morals “brave.” Instead of bowing to societal pressure, as many would have, Morgan noted that Cameron “was honest to what he believed.”

I’d be first in line to sign a petition to get Piers Morgan to take that shit back.

In the meantime, I’m gonna go take a scalding hot shower.

Also. Also. Also: Aren’t You GLAAD We Didn’t Say Banana?

It’s been a while since our last AlsoAlsoAlso so we have a lot of very important things to share with you. So many!

+ The 2011-2012 Where Are We On TV GLAAD report is out, and Fox and HBO are listed as the most queer-friendly channels. This year is extra-special because it includes this cute little slideshow where you can see all these characters in the flesh. Brittany is listed as bisexual, sidenote.

GLAAD says the number of LGBT characters on scripted primetime broadcast television is expected to decrease for the first time in four years. The overall numbers may have been disappointing to GLAAD, but the amount of lesbian and bisexual characters has risen significantly, even if gay men have stayed the same. (In previous years the amount of lesbian characters was deceptively more significant just because of The L Word — that show basically tripled the amount of lezzers on television but didn’t reflect any overall network initiative to have more female LGBT characters in shows that weren’t defined by their sexuality.)

+ Smith College has a Quidditch team. No one is surprised except apparently Riese.

+ Gay twin rap group Elephant released a new song and video called “Queer Nation” that heavily criticizes homophobia in the rap community.

+ There’s an interesting conversation about how to be feminine but visibly gay over at Effing Dykes. Also, a “study” about hoodies.

+ My High School Boyfriend Was Gay. Oh, the internet.

+ Fox News would like you to object to Archie Comics guy getting gay married.

+” A group of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Iranians have posted videos of themselves on Facebook in a campaign to highlight the discrimination against sexual minorities in Iran wherehomosexuals are put to death.” The page is called “We Are Everywhere” and includes support from queer Iranians and from people around the world protesting of the imprisonment and execution of LGBT people in Iran.

+ The 1938 dating guide for single women. Still oddly applicable.

+ Leaked documents show the Catholic church did not support the 2009 proposed Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill, saying that while the Church believes homosexuality is a sin, it should not be criminalized.

+ The NCAA has new rules for transgender athletes that you probably have feelings about. Also, the NFL added sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination policy. Sports!

+ People have positive feelings about the new TLC show “Big Love,” which is about “five fluffy friends who live in New York City and work in the beauty industry.”

+ A message from a man to a woman: You are not crazy. It’s interesting!

+ Unity: Journalists of Color and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, both of whom promote diversity in the newsroom, are combining forces, which is significant because the larger Unity organization is in turmoil right now.

+What would Sex and the City be like if it were airing today? Different, probably.

+ Salon wants people to stop covering Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Even Leonard Cohen is kind of sick of it.

+ The Sex Positive Photo Project is relevant to your interests.

+ Our Fonts, Our Friends is something I deeply appreciate.

+ A lesbian couple suffered severe homophobia at the hands of the resort hosting their honeymoon retreat. The couple said that “the company refused to acknowledge their holiday as a honeymoon and … they did not receive the special treatment offered to others because they were a same-sex couple.”

+ Girls should do tech! Only a small fraction of computer science and other tech students are women, so the Boys & Girls Clubs of America teamed up with CA Technologies to implement an initiative that encourages girls to go into tech work.

+ Bitch Magazine did a nice interview Jennifer Knapp in which she discusses the intersection of Christianity and sexuality.

+ Focus on the Family is laying off a bunch of its staff for the fifth consecutive year. They’re also cutting $10 million from their budget. And all the homophobic Whos down in Whoville will all cry, Boo Hoo.

+ A North Carolina pastor was targeted for taking up an anti-gay stance, and by “targeted,” they of course mean “he’s received four or five voice messages from angry people who called him a ‘hypocrite’ and accused him of hating gays.” Someone also hung up a sign of protest outside his church! That poor man.

+ Look, a lesbian Star Trek wedding!

+Sesame Street did a frighteningly accurate parody of Glee. I especially appreciate that they included the piano player.

+The New Yorker ran a really great article about women in movies and also about the pathetic state Hollywood is in. The author suggests they start working on “The Cute Bear from Those Toilet-Paper Ads Movie,” among other funny things.

+Melissa Etheridge is taking advantage of the fact that they weren’t legally married against Tammy Lynn. Yikes.

+A wrongful death lawsuit has been filed by the partner of Christina Santiago, an activist who was killed at the Indiana State Fair when the stage collapsed and who we love a lot.

+Millionaire Matchmaker is offensive to everyone.

+Everyone is Gay is on tour now, so watch the eff out!

+One of Rick Perry’s supporters has described same-sex adoption as the state having “sold each kid to a homosexual couple that’s not married for $10,000,” which would be funny if it wasn’t so remarkably upsetting.

+The New York Times wrote a thing about how there are vagina jokes on their teevee! They seemed offended. AfterEllen had a good, pun-ridden response.

+An interesting thing in general about the 2012 race when it comes to social media/information

The Gays Are Taking Over TV, Except Where We’re Not: The 2011 GLAAD Network Responsibility Index

The GLAAD Network Responsibility Index says this about itself:

“The GLAAD Network Responsibility Index (NRI) is an evaluation of the quantity and quality of images of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people on television. It is intended to serve as a road map toward increasing fair, accurate and inclusive LGBT media representation.”

The report looks at broadcast networks and cable networks, and the things that people usually say about it include:

There aren’t enough queer people on TV!
There aren’t enough queer ladies on TV!
There aren’t enough evangelical religious figures on TV! (if you are the SBC)

And so far, all of these statements — except the last one — are still true.

According to GLAAD-commissioned Pulse of Equality Survey, which looks at public perception and gay people, 19% of respondents reported more positive feelings towards gays over the previous five years, and 34% of those said it was partly because of seeing lesbian or gay characters on television. Basically: television, unsurprisingly, has the power to change minds. And things like The Real L Word are on it. Think about that for a minute.

Last year, the majority of LGBT representation happened in network programming aimed towards younger viewers, which is not surprising, considering that support for gay marriage is significantly higher among younger people. But while last year MTV became the first network ever to score an “excellent” rating for having over 42% of its original programming count as LGBT-inclusive, this year it didn’t even make the list: the GLAAD report cites a combination of significantly fewer LGBT-inclusive hours and problematic episodes of Jersey Shore and True Life, though it still applauds MTV for anti-bullying initiatives and queer characters on Skins, If You Really Knew Me, and The Real World. Instead, ABC Family topped the cable networks category, with 55% and the report’s second “excellent” ever. The ABC Family lineup includes Pretty Little Liars, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Greek, and Make It or Break It.

via ABC FAMILY/ANDREW ECCLES

The broadcast networks’ ratings fall in the same order as in 2009-10, with The CW in the lead with 33% of LGBT-inclusive hours of original programming, followed by Fox, ABC, NBC, and CBS, with 10%. In the cable networks, ABC Family has a significant lead with 55%, followed by Showtime, TNT, HBO, AMC, Syfy, FX, USA, and A&E and TBS, which both had a shameful 5%.

Except in super problematic situations such as on Jersey Shore, the quality of the representation does not seem to have been a factor. The report looked at whether or not an LGBT depiction happened; whether it was major or minor; whether any significant discussion of LGBT issues happened; “quality” is listed under the grading considerations, but how it was determined isn’t specified. For instance, Showtime was reported as having 37% of LGBT-inclusive hours, which the report attributes to The Real L Word and Shameless. Can we talk for a minute about just what percentage of The Real L Word is aimed towards an accurate portrayal of lesbians instead of towards an accurate portrayal of what an audience of straight men might like to watch? As a lady-loving-lady, I certainly want to see young, presumably intelligent queer women reduced to a pile of power-of-the-clam-loaded drama, on-screen sex, and trying to make silicone copies of some dude’s penis because the producers won’t acknowledge that maybe lesbians can make babies without phallic objects provided by their straight dude friends. I don’t want quality instead of quality. I want both.

But there’s an even bigger problem: the huge lack of trans* representations and racial and ethnic diversity. Even in the most inclusive networks, the rates for these types of representation are abysmal. Only 2% of the 310.5 LGBT-inclusive hours across ten cable networks included trans* representation, consisting of Carmen on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and an episode of Terriers that dealt with the murder of a trans sex worker. There wasn’t a single regular or recurring trans* character anywhere on American TV (Degrassi‘s Adam is on a show imported from Canada). To say this isn’t great would be a massive understatement. According to the report,

“Despite the obvious dearth in representations of lesbians and bisexuals, the most glaringly underrepresented LGBT population on network TV (and TV in general) are transgender people, who were included in 1% of the LGBT-inclusive hours tracked this year, which works out to just 0.002% of the total hours of broadcast primetime programming. While there were several primetime broadcast series that featured transgender storylines in single episodes, each one contained at least some degree of problematic content. This is certainly an area where the broadcast networks should strive to improve.”

Race and ethnicity are problematic points as well. In the broadcast networks, NBC led with only 38% of the LGBT impressions from white characters. ABC, however, had the least racial diversity with 85% of impressions from white characters, and with most of the diversity points coming from Callie on Grey’s Anatomy and Alejo Salazar on The Whole Truth. Fox, CBS, and The CW also featured mostly white representations.

Let’s take a look:

ABC

(broadcasting network)

via wholetrughtv.com & greysanatomy.wikia.com

ABC received a “good” on the report and has a significant amount of commitment to lesbian, gay, and bi storylines with Ugly Betty, Brothers & Sisters, Grey’s Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, Modern Family, and Dirty, Sexy Money. Also I think some chick named Ellen once came out on an ABC sitcom or something.

However, while ABC wins at overall LGBT-inclusive programming hours, 85% of its 479 impressions were white characters. Most of the 15% consisted of Dr. Callie Torres on Grey’s Anatomy (who, excitingly, got married) — while The Whole Truth‘s gay Latino attorney Alejo Salazar added a little diversity, the show was cancelled, and none of the other non-white characters had recurring roles.

NBC

(broadcasting network)

via v2.ten.com.au and queersvu.wordpress.com

NBC scored an overall “adequate” with only 15% of their hours being LGBT-inclusive. However, it features the greatest racial diversity of its LGBT impressions:

“While a total of 65% of the 1584 total LGBT impressions on the broadcast networks were white characters, only 38% of the 227 impressions on NBC were white. Conversely, 36% of NBC’s impressions were from Latino characters thanks largely to Oscar Nunez on The Office, and 23% were Asian-Pacific Islander (API) because of Dr. George Huang on Law & Order: SVU. However, only 3% of impressions on NBC were black/African American.”

Additionally, even though Dr. Huang became a regular character, he still didn’t appear in every episode, and the actor who play him will not be returning to the show in the upcoming season.

ABC Family

(cable network)

ABC Family got the second “excellent” rating in the GLAAD report’s history this year, and is incredibly racially diverse. It really just deserves cupcakes:

“In addition to posting the highest percentage of LGBT-inclusive hours (55%) since the NRI began, ABC Family was also the most racially diverse this year, with 35% white impressions, 25% black, 13% Latino/a, and 28% multiracial. No API LGBT impressions were counted on the network, due to the fact that GLAAD counts Pretty Little Liars’ Emily Fields as multiracial. However, she is also of Asian-Pacific Islander ancestry.”

via abcfamily.go.com

Compare that to AMC, which didn’t have a single racially or ethnically diverse character, and it’s even more of a step in the right direction. Hopefully AMC, not to mention FX (98% white), A&E (93% white) and TBS (83% white), will catch up.

Finally, what would a report on diversity and inclusion be without the Southern Baptist Convention slamming both of those things? Not good enough, that’s what. The SBC is predictably irate over the continued positive growth of LGBT representation, and has suggested that gay lobbyists are bribing the entertainment industry to “use their media to recast the homosexual lifestyle as normative.” The SCB representative also lamented the lack of evangelical Christians on TV, which is the only lack of representation worth celebrating.

Glee’s Naya Rivera Sells Sweet Lady Kisses at GLAAD Awards; Lady Gaga’s Got New Songs

GLAAD MEDIA AWARDS:

Our very own Santana is all grown up and played host of the San Francisco GLAAD Media Awards this weekend which honored The Kids Are All Right and Kim Cattrall. Naya Rivera peppered her intro with all sorts of inside Glee jokes, referencing “sweet lady kisses” and challenging the crowd with:

“For those of you who don’t watch [Glee], A) kill yourself and B) as if.”

Clearly relishing Santana’s character arc and evolution, she proudly announced:

“I am here to tell you that playing gay is good in every way. And that hopefully the huge increases in gay and lesbian characters will lead to more diverse and transgender-inclusive storylines.”

Naya also put a little money aside for Glee by auctioning off two kisses for $3,500 each!

More importantly though is that she said “Brittanna” out loud. GLAAD presents a different set of awards at its three annual ceremonies — New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. San Francisco is the last ceremony of the year and the awards presented were:

Outstanding Film – Wide Release: The Kids are All Right
Outstanding Documentary: 8: The Mormon Proposition
Outstanding Spanish-Language Music Artist: Christian Chávez
Golden Gate Award: Kim Cattral

The following pictures may be relevant to your interests:

LADY GAGA:

In a brilliant PR move, Gaga is staving off (or maintaining control over) the Born This Way album leakage by essentially releasing a new track every few days. “Hair” debuted just moments ago and check out a LIVE performance of “Edge of Glory.” Both songs feature Clarence Clemmons of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band on saxophone.

“Hair”

“Edge of Glory”

Finally, if you’re still trying to figure out what the hell was happening in the “Judas” video, the good people at Queerty have enlisted a religious scholar to decode that baby for you.

Thoughts on the new songs?

UNICORN PLAN-IT:

Last week we announced the Kickstarter fundraising campaign for Unicorn Plan-It, Autostraddle’s first scripted web series written by and starring Sarah Croce, Haviland Stillwell and Ashley Reed. Today we’re excited to announce the final casting of the fourth series regular, playing the role of Bambi, Catherine Wadkins! Catherine is known for playing Mary Bishop on General Hospital and she has also appeared on Medium, Medical Investigation, and Helter Skelter. She was seen on Broadway in Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All The Luck opposite Chris O’Donnell. You should probably know that she also makes amazing video greeting cards for the interweb. That’s right kids, donate a few quarters and that face is ready, willing and able to come to Autostraddle in a big way!

AMBIGUOUSLY GAY DUO:

Ah, nostalgia! Saturday Night Live resurrected the long-running superhero cartoon, “The Ambiguously Gay Duo” for the first time in eons this weekend. However, in a surreal twist, the animated short morphed into live-action when a “flesh ray weapon” transformed the 2D gay/not gay Ace and Gary in to human played by Jon Hamm and Jimmy Fallon with Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and Ed Helms appearing as villains. Hilarious or biphobic (as some have claimed?)

ADELE:

First off, if you don’t already own her album “21” drop everything right now and RUN to iTunes. Some lovely quotes from her Out Magazine cover story:

“I get a lot of mail from people who tell me that I make them really happy to be themselves, and really comfortable with who they are, which I love. I would hate it if someone was, like, ‘I wish I was you’ because I’m as insecure about myself as the next person. In what way? Just that I’m not good enough — in my music, in my relationships, and that I’m never going to be brave enough to tell someone how I feel.”

She also tells the story of a young gay fan who came out after listening to “Someone Like You”:

“He fancied someone at school, but he wasn’t out. And he listened to ‘Someone Like You’ and came out to his best friend and then to the boy he fancied, and it turned out that he was gay as well, and now they’re together — he’s like 15. I had to leave so I didn’t burst into tears.”

GLAAD Media Awards Los Angeles: The Liveblog!

Hello you pretty young things! There is good news and bad news today. Bad news: no Sunday Funday, which means Lindsay Lohan could potentially have worn a slightly gay slouchy knit hat and you could be missing out. Good news: Today is the GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles, and a ton of really f*cking awesome people are going! For instance, Kristin Chenoweth is going to accept her GLAAD Vanguard Award for a lot of things including her response to Ramin Setoodeh’s anti-gay Newsweek article. Robert Greenblatt, the chairman of NBC Entertainment, and former head of Showtime, will also be honored with the Stephen F. Kolzak Award.

And in recognition of Riese’s consulation with her now-famous letter, Riese and bcw/Marni are going to the GLAAD Awards Kristin’s guests! That means Riese is technically off press duty tonight.

And therefore also in attendance will be Alex and sexy calendar lady Kelli to interview celebs on the red carpet along with Miss April, light of all of our lives. The whole event will be hosted by Rashida Jones and Amy Poehler, which, uh, great?! Basically there is no reason for you to do anything else but refresh this page over and over forever, or at least until later tonight. ARE YOU READY YET LET’S GO!

10:26 PM: I think we might be done. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that when someone holds up a can of lube (???) and a swimsuit calendar (???) in the dressing room/supply closet (???) the night is over. Riese says via text: “We’re done, everyone lost their passes and then we couldn’t find the car and then we got lost in the hotel maze and now we’re standing on a bridge and Marni is smoking and I’m putting on lip gloss.” Well! There you have it. Good night kittens, smoking is bad for you. Dream of Kristin Chenoweth and pie.

9:55 PM: WHAAAAAAA IS THAT LUBE?!?

9:47 PM: Riese via text: You’re all too young to get it, but Robert Reed (Mr. Brady) just got a shoutout from Greenblatt. Greenblatt left Showtime this year which makes me really worried about the future of the second season of The Real L Word. Also, unrelated, me and Alex had brunch with Nikki and Jill from The Real L Word yesterday and it was really great, I like them a lot. Tell the children that.” YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST. (You’re the children fyi.)

9:40 PM: Alex: Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC entertainment honored with the Stephen F. Kolzak Award just now. The presentation that introduced him included a LOT of L Word clips, so go Robert! (Obvs Dolly Parton presented his award.) Riese concurs: “There were a lot of L Word clips in the Robert Greenblatt montage, a lot of Tasha and Alice.”

9:35 PM: Riese via text: Marni is hyperventilating over Dolly Parton

9:31 PM: You guys Dolly Parton was totally the special surprise guest

9:25 PM: Oops I accidentally forgot the part where Amber Heard happened

9:20 PM: There’s a tie for Outstanding Comedy Series! Modern Family and Glee, obvs. Joel McHale presented the award and we’re in love with him. Mike O’Malley and Chris Colfer accepted the award.

9:00 PM: Alex: Kristin just gave an amazing acceptance speech! We recorded it on film. So exciting.

8:37 PM: Riese via text: “This is super cute, she’s crying and hasn’t even started talking yet, Sean Hayes is still talking.”

8:33 PM: My roommate has suggested that we institute a “GLAAD/glad” pun contest, and I agree with this idea. Best pun in the comments wins an award from Emily Choo. Ready set go. Also, everyone is glad about Chaz Bono’s speech.

8:31 PM: They’re presenting Kristin’s award! Riese says that Sean Hayes just said “On Ambien, she flies higher than any rocket I know.” #Iloveeverything

8:29 PM: Riese via text: “Amy and Rashida just said there’s gonna be an amazing special guest everyone should wait for and I feel like it’s gonna be Dolly Parton. What if Dolly Parton comes out.” Riese also wants everyone to know she’s sober b/c she’s afraid of dying now. I hope her mom is reading this.

8:26 PM: Ok this makes more sense

8:22 PM: Stop the presses. Riese says “Someone is doing crazy shit with their limbs.” WELL THANK YOU FEARLESS LEADER.

8:18 PM: What if Kristin Chenoweth made a pie for everyone at the GLAAD Media Awards and hid it under their seats? I mean, she didn’t, but what if?
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8:07 PM: Oh wait, I think that Janice Langbehn is talking about how her family was completely violated by the Florida hospital that her wife died in and also by the general level of completely insane bone-crushing day-in-and-day-out oppression that gay people all over America live with. So everyone is just crying I guess. Carry on.

8:05 PM: What if California finally did fall into the ocean/the Big One finally came

7:56 PM: God it would be just super if there were pictures of any of the celebrities attending this event uploaded to the internet by media outlets by this point in the evening, wouldn’t it?

7:41 PM: Riese, via text: “In some obtuse way, being here for this makes me feel like we are part of a really special time in American history w/r/t gay rights, there’s so much happening and changing.” I’m assuming she’s talking about Dolly Parton

7:38 PM: Project Runway just won Outstanding Reality Show. Apparently The Real L Word wasn’t nominated. I know, I’m just as shocked as you.

7:32 PM: Said photo montage, it’s making Alex Vega cry which I mean is that not the cutest fucking thing

7:28 PM: Everyone knows the best montages are training montages, but this one sounds ok too

7:23 PM: Riese also says that Dolly Parton is going to be the surprise special guest, but I can’t tell if she’s for real or just fucking with me because she knows that I want Dolly Parton to be the surprise special guest at everything, including “Tuesday” and “breakfast.” #9to5forever #jolene

7:18 PM: Oh man I wish this part were being broadcast, it sounds super awesome and cute! Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones are in menswear and Rashida is wearing cute glasses, aka is the perfect woman. Also she just said “Lady Gaga has done as much for gay people as she has for lazy people trying to think of Halloween costumes.” I think she should run for President.

7:15 PM: Croce is calling this “three bois one mirror.” There was also something about a peeing contest that I’m not going to repeat here because I’m a fucking lady. (Although I do feel it’s important to note that Vega won.)

7:04 PM: If you were wondering what it feels like to be a gay or gay-friendly celeb in the greater LA area tonight, it’s this:

6:41 PM: Um stop everything, Riese says that they are auctioning off a puppy for $3,000. As a vegan, I am not sure how to feel about this, but as a person who wants a puppy, I feel like I want that puppy. Is the puppy gay? Has it eaten a diamond ring or something? I have many questions.

6:36 PM: Riese via text: “There are two animals on my plate, and our ad in the program looks really hot! Also, we were in the bathroom with Kirsten Dunst and she’s just like us!” I assume that means that Kirsten Dunst made faces at herself in the mirror and asked aloud why she looked so terrible and whether too much of her shoulders were showing. Kirsten Dunst, I salute you.

6:30 PM: “Alex, with legitimate fear in her voice: ‘How do you interview a deaf person?!”

6:22 PM: Ok we are back with some EXECUTIVE ALEX VEGA REALNESS:

6:13 PM: Riese & Marni are at the fancy dinner thing and Kristin Chenoweth just told Marni she looks cute. I think a lot of important things are happening according to Alex but I don’t have any pictures or anything of them, so stand by for just a few minutes guys!

6:02 PM: Um, Sister Wives

6:00 PM: Riese via text: “We’re at dinner, there’s a thing on a piece of lettuce and I’m gonna eat it”

5:51 PM: You guys, Press Team is so cute. I wish there was a kitten graphic for interviewing Tori Spelling. There isn’t, but also that just means that you get to look at Sarah Croce actually doing it, which, I mean, awesome.

5:44 PM: I am fairly certain that this is Lisa Vanderkamp, a Real Housewife of somewhere in this cold cruel world. Apparently the GLAAD Media Awards are the place to be!

5:39 PM: Marni via text: THERE’S ANOTHER DUDE WEARING MY SHIRT HERE

GOD THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS

5:31 PM: See what I mean about Shay Mitchell?

5:26 PM: Riese via text: “All the Pretty Little Liars are here, maybe we will finally find out who A is. Also there are like 10,000 dudes here, in 5 years it has to be 50/50. Autostraddle will make this happen.”

5:21 PM: Tori Spelling is here! I don’t know who she is.

5:15 PM: Riese, via text: “Melissa Etheridge is wearing ripped up corduroys and shades indoors and looks badass.” UGH I am going to go listen to “Yes I Am” and scowl

5:05 PM: And back in the real world: HOARDERS IS ON! Sister Wives is next. I am ALL THE FUCK SET.

5:00 PM: Riese and Marni have finally made it, and have visual confirmation re: Alex Vega and The Press Team. That sounds like a band I would listen to. Someone start making the tshirts stat.

4:56 PM: WHAAAAAAAT Alex Vega says that Melissa Etheridge just walked by, but isn’t doing any interviews. Doesn’t she know that I would have come to her window ANY TIME between the ages of, oh, fourteen and now? Including the part when she was undergoing chemo?

4:50 PM: Team Press has made it to the red carpet! The red carpet just got kind of sexy, no? I hope they yell “FRONT OF THE DRESS” a lot. That’s probably why I’m not on Team Press though, and am instead sitting home alone wearing a tea-stained wifebeater and jeans that don’t fit. Life lessons.

4:45 PM: Oh I think Janice Langbehn is here also, she’s the one whose partner tragically fell ill and died while they were on a cruise vacation with their kids and was prevented from seeing her as she died in her hospital room by the Florida hospital staff. Sorry to be a downer, but I am glad she’s here! It’s pretty great that there’s an awards ceremony for, like, real people who deserve to have good things happen to them? And not just famous people with shiny hair and glossy lips?

4:38 PM: There is some photographer dude whose thing is yelling “The front of the dress! The front of the dress!” every time someone walks by that he wants to take pictures of, and he kind of needs to slow his roll but other than that everything seems really fun and perfect and stuff, Kristin’s looking-back-over-shoulder-sexy-baby-kitten-angel face is really incomparable

4:32 PM: KRISTIN CHENOWETH IS HERE ohmigod she is so small and cute and perfect, I love everything forever

4:30 PM: OH SHIT WAIT Shay Mitchell actually is here and is wearing this thing that is like if Lady Gaga had sex with Jackie O and their baby became a television high school lesbian with a creepy dead friend!

4:28 PM: Riese, via text: We’re stuck in traffic, I wonder if Collin Farrell is stuck in traffic too

4:18 PM: Holy shit, Nikki Peet is here! She’s getting a Special Recognition Award? Do you guys even remember who she is, no you don’t you’re just here for NSFW Sunday and PLL recaps. Nikki Peet is a high school senior who mobilized like the entire state of Texas because her school (illegally) refused to let her start a GSA, she is a fucking badass. This is awesome. ALL OF THE GLAAD MEDIA AWARDS FOR YOU, NIKKI PEET

4:15 PM: I wish RuPaul was going to this

4:08 PM: Look how cute Riese and bcw/Marni are. I think Marni may have taken those sunglasses from my ten-year-old cousin but I don’t even blame her, that’s how cute they look

4:05 PM: Someone named Shareen Mitchell is here, which sounds deceptively like Shay Mitchell. She has a very pretty red dress on!

3:59 PM: The nominees from Nurse Jackie are here! This is really exciting for me, I had somehow forgotten that this meant all the gay or gayish characters from every TV show ever would be in the same place at the same time, it’s like a fantasy television world utopia!

3:51 PM: Someone named Ariel is here instead, she has long hair and is very pretty. I wish I knew who she was. Is this also about Pretty Little Liars? Will everyone in the world now know i don’t actually watch it?

3:50 PM: Twitter is very concerned about whether Darren Criss is coming. No one has any idea. The tension is killing me. What if he stays home to sing Katy Perry songs instead?

3:48 PM: Also, uh, HEY SHAY MITCHELL HEY.

3:36 PM: Alex, via email: Team Press is ready! These ladies are ready to ask the tough questions, get real. Prepare to find out Adam Lambert’s stance on Libya.

Four For You, GLAAD Media Awards, It’s Sunday Funday!

GLAAD AWARDS:

You guys the GLAAD Media Awards were last night! A lot of people we like won, like 30 Rock, True Blood and Essence. Ricky Martin won the Vito Russo Award for his appearance on Oprah (who was also nominated for an award), and publicly thanked/acknowledged his boyfriend Carlos for the first time ever (!!!) Also, this picture happened!

Autostraddle sent Intern Lily to the GLAAD Awards so she could breathe air with Ricky Martin, and we’ll have a full recap from her and a special correspondent tomorrow or the next day or the day after that.

This was actually the 25th Anniversary of GLAAD: and a good time reflect on how lucky we are that people like Kristin (who will be given her award in Los Angeles in April) and Ricky and Lafayette who I know is imaginary are here in the world. Or as Jarrett Barrios, GLAAD President, says:  “When allies like Kristin take such powerful stands against anti-gay sentiments in the media, it sends an important message of equality… It is a privilege to honor such a talented and conscientious advocate for fairness towards the LGBT community.”

SLDN CELEBRATION:

Other gay people celebrated too this weekend! It was the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network’s National Dinner this weekend, an event to celebrate those GLBTQ-identified people fighting for our country, and also those who are fighting for them and their rights. It sounds like it was a fabulous event, with appearances by such diverse individuals as the Gay Men’s Chorus and Barney Frank, and a lot of discussion of victories with DADT and the road ahead. Pam’s House Blend has helpfully liveblogged the whole thing here, check it out!

QUEEN LATIFAH:

It was her birthday! She’s 41! We will acknowledge this despite her refusal to acknowledge us back. Happy birthday, Vintage Biker Queen Latifah!

AMERICANS OK WITH US KINDA:

A new poll shows that the majority of Americans are ok with gay marriage. ‘More than half of Americans say it should be legal for gays and lesbians to marry, a first in nearly a decade of polls by ABC News and The Washington Post. This milestone result caps a dramatic, long-term shift in public attitudes. From a low of 32 percent in a 2004 survey of registered voters, support for gay marriage has grown to 53 percent today. Forty-four percent are opposed, down 18 points from that 2004 survey.”

SUGAR BOXX:

I mostly want to link you to this because it sounds awesome and hilarious, and I’m allowed to because lesbians are mentioned! “If a women’s prison movie doesn’t have an actual prison in it, should we still call it a prison movie? “Sugar Boxx,” arriving on DVD this week from Entertainment One, can be described more accurately as a work camp movie because the producers couldn’t afford an actual cell or even a few steel bars to throw in front of the camera at any point during the film’s 86-minute runtime. Instead, our women in bondage look like they’re spending a bummer of a vacation at a public park… As the film’s screenwriter, Jarrett boasts one accomplishment: In the traditional women-in-chains flick, lesbianism is something inflicted on our wrongly accused protagonists by butch cellmates or obese lady guards who threaten the lash for noncompliance, but in “Sugar Boxx,” plucky TV reporter Valerie March (Geneviere Anderson) is in a committed lesbian relationship from the get-go. In fact, much of the film’s suspense, if you manage to care at all, is generated by Valerie’s efforts to avoid compromising her sexual orientation as the drooling hicks of the Sugar State Women’s Prison attempt to force themselves on her. This is by far the most enlightened aspect of “Sugar Boxx,” which for the most part makes “Reform School Girls” (1986) with Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics look like it was produced by Stanley Kramer.”

WIRED:

WIRED Magazine has featured an actual female engineer on their cover for the first time ever, which usually features things like “wires,” “men,” or “disembodied breast.” There is a certain amount of brouhaha over the image itself, which you are certainly welcome to engage in, but this being the Sunday Funday we’re going to quit while we’re ahead and call this a good thing.

WOMEN WRITERS:

You guys it’s women’s history month!!! In honor of it, these eight women writers have written about their female heroes and inspirations. It will make you feel really good to read I promise!

“UPPERS”:

It would appear that the Sunday Funday concept is catching on, which I fully credit us for: Salon has a roundup of feel-good news to offset the fact that if you’re anything like me, you have had a legitimate breakdown every time you’ve turned on the news for the past 2 weeks or so. I have to say, though, they did a pretty solid job. This week a Great Dane gave birth to 17 puppies, and there’s this video of some elephants!

Kristin Chenoweth Wins GLAAD Vanguard Award for Newsweek Response Piece

We were thrilled to learn that Kristin Chenoweth is the 2011 recipient of the Vanguard Award, presented annually at the Los Angeles GLAAD Media Awards to honor a member of the entertainment community who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for LGBT people. You probably remember back in May when the Newsweek/Ramin Setoodeh soap opera first began that it was K.Cheno who publicly stood up for gay actors -namely her Promises, Promises co-star Sean Hayes– when Setoodeh claimed that they can’t play straight.

But here’s where it gets interesting! Kristin actually consulted with our hero/Editor-in-Chief Riese when composing her response to Newsweek and it was Autostraddle who first broke the article to the media, so we consider this a big win in a lot of ways! After our post went live, it was picked up by nearly every media outlet on the web including the New York Times, The Huffington Post and E-Online. It became a topic of debate on The View, The Today Show and The Joy Behar Show and inspired an all-out Newsweek boycott from Glee creator, Ryan Murphy.

Prior to Kristin’s response, Setoodeh’s “Straight Jacket” article mostly just pissed off a bunch of gay bloggers but when Kristin spoke out it became something of a media phenomenon and most importantly put the spotlight on this very real Hollywood fear that is preventing tons of gay actors/actresses from coming out.

Kristin is a longtime supporter/lover of the gays and actually marched with Autostraddle in the National Equality March back in October 2009. I interviewed Kristin last summer, after the media storm quieted down to chat about her return to Glee, her brand new ensemble TV project, her strong Christian faith and her feelings about the overwhelming coverage of her Newsweek response article.