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Hollywood’s Gay Powerati Are Fuming
For the city’s gay powerati, election night dealt a crushing blow. The Daily Beast’s Kevin Sessums talks to David Geffen, Darren Star, and others fuming about Prop 8.
A week after the election, I asked some of my friends in Hollywood—gay men who wield power of one degree or another—how it felt out in California now that they’ve had a few days to assess the passage of Proposition 8. The proposition stripped gays and lesbians in the state of their constitutional right to same-sex marriage, and passed the same night my friends were all celebrating the election of Barack Obama as our next president.
So how is Hollywood’s gay community reacting to the Prop’s passage? Are they feeling a kind of collective powerlessness? Were they emotionally whipsawed by the election results?
“There is no question in my mind that gay marriage is an inevitability,” says Darren Star, the creative force behind the television series Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and Sex and the City, among many others. “Californians like to think of themselves as socially progressive and were surprised and angry to wake up to find bigotry introduced into their constitution. Exit polls show gay marriage has overwhelming support among younger voters—so obviously this is just a matter of time. I’ll just stay out of Arkansas for now,” he says, offering a sardonic joke as he points out that two other states—Florida and Arizona—also outlawed same-sex marriage last Tuesday. Arkansas even went so far as to ban adoption by gays and lesbians (or any other unmarried person).
Race has always—up until this point—trumped sexual orientation as a socially accepted civil rights issue.
“Obviously, like many other gay individuals, the election was bittersweet for me,” agrees Greg Berlanti, the executive producer of Brothers & Sisters on ABC as well as the creator of the network’s Dirty Sexy Money and Eli Stone (he is also the writer/director of Warner Brothers’ upcoming movie based on the DC comic book series Green Lantern). “I was listening to all of these people on television say how they can finally tell their children that they can grow up and be anything,” says Berlanti. ”And I kept thinking—no you can’t. Not if they’re gay. If they’re gay or lesbian—forget about becoming president—they still can’t even become a husband or a wife. But the days since have been invigorating...watching gay men and women and our straight friends come to life around this issue. Realizing that equality and change isn’t something that happens passively like a movie you go see—it’s a movie we’re all making together,” he says, using the one metaphor that his fellow Californians of all sexual persuasions can understand.
“The civil rights struggle took a giant step forward and a big step backwards,” says Dan Jinks, the Academy Award-winning producer of American Beauty. “I know it was a close vote,” he says of Prop 8. “But it is still upsetting. One of the things that Prop 8 proved is that gays and lesbians did not have the political infrastructure to utilize against the infrastructure of organized religion, which really fought against us—especially the Mormon church. The churches and their allies were able to make this a national issue. It seems that only by losing this vote has it finally become a national issue for the gay and lesbian community.”
Jinks’ latest movie, Milk, based on the life of the assassinated gay San Francisco political leader Harvey Milk, will be released by Focus Films on December 5. The film, directed by Gus Van Sant, is being touted as a front-runner for the Best Picture Oscar come February.
Yet, if the film does win, it may be considered a consolation prize after the gay community suffered such a stinging defeat at the hands of California voters. So many of us remember how Brokeback Mountain seemed a lock for Best Picture but was beaten by Crash, a movie that not only depicted the dangerous shoals of California race relations, but also, by winning the Oscar, foretold the outcome of Prop 8. Race has always—up until this point—trumped sexual orientation as a socially accepted civil rights issue.
”That was our mistake,” says super-macher David Geffen, considered the town’s most powerful person who just happens to be gay. “So many African Americans don’t look at gay marriage as a civil rights issue,” he says of the community that voted 70 percent against same-sex marriage. “They look on it as a religious one. And we, for whatever reason…fear? Arrogance? Complacency? We did not do enough outreach to them. We need to begin a dialogue with them, because we should be putting this back on the ballot every election every year until we win.”
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Benjamin Sarlin is a reporter for The Daily Beast. He previously covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com.
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Kevin Sessums is the author of the New York Times bestseller Mississippi Sissy, a memoir of his childhood. He was executive editor of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and Allure. He is a contributing editor of Parade. His new memoir, I Left It on Mountain will be published by St. Martins Press.
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Kevin Sessums is the author of the New York Times bestseller Mississippi Sissy, a memoir of his childhood. He was executive editor of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and Allure. He is a contributing editor of Parade. His new memoir, I Left It on Mountain will be published by St. Martins Press.
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Kevin Sessums is the author of the New York Times bestseller Mississippi Sissy, a memoir of his childhood. He was executive editor of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine and a contributing editor of Vanity Fair and Allure. He is a contributing editor of Parade. His new memoir, I Left It on Mountain will be published by St. Martins Press.
"ultimately it seems that an individual's chosen religious beliefs have always-up until this point-trumped another's liberty as a socially accepted civil rights issue".
One wonders why a person's tangent of belief has been empowered to supersede another being with a basic core non-belief. America decries the religious oppression in the Arab and Muslim nations, and yet America champions the exact same principle that holier-than-thou religiously chosen beliefs are empowered over those who choose to be non-believers. If I choose to believe in nothing except The Golden Rule, then I should have the empowered entire foundation of civil rights... and anyone veering off into individual beliefs should lose fractions of their credibility commensurate to the distance from reality that they believe in. Religious rights are indeed a basic guarantee, but those rights should extend only to worshipping. No rights should be allocated to preaching to others that aren't worshippers. And if a church uses it's financial coffers politically (as the Utah mormons did in California), then that church must forfeit its tax-free status.
It's perverted that religious communities are positioned anti-social... and it's perverted that same-sex marriage foes interpret marriage sexually and not as a contract of love.
Perhaps this argument has been abandon by many on the world scene, but I believe it is very valid to your struggle. Imagine, if you would, that we were created to love God only, without choice. Such an automaton nature would limit us greatly, and our freedom to choose good or evil would be taken from us.
If God created us to love Him, how does this sit with Him? There's no choice in the matter. That kind of love is not genuine. He took a chance willingly to allow us to choose, whether good or ill. So our behavior from this point out hinges our our decision. He has already paid us the highest compliment with the freedom to reach for good, or to embrace wrong choices.
No matter what the genetic argument for homosexuality is, it all boils down in the end to choice. A person of a different or even mixed race cannot choose to change their race. It is not a behavioral factor, it is purely biolgical. In contrast, homosexuality is not a biological factor, because you also have a behavioral choice.
In all of mankind, Americans tend to make one of the most stature-debilitating statements, no matter what their "persuasion" is: "That's just how I am, if you don't like it, too bad." That is too bad, but more for the individual, who resists growth and change simply because his/her society has lost its sense of boundaries.
We reject the theory of a Creator in the classroom, and mistakenly move evolution into the fact column. It is no wonder that we have also pushed to remove morality in society and culture, pushing toleration as acceptance into the dogma or an intolerance far worse than the "religious oppressors" and "bigotry", however misdefined (remember the people voted=Democracy...).
There is no sense of "holier-than-thou" here, but simply seeking to stand before God with a clear conscience, depending on grace for every weakness in life. Changing my choices, based upon a standard that is not my own, but my Creator's.
Thank You,
Driven1
Keep in mind that the Mormon Church is a cult and their members think like cultists. You might be surprised to know that most polygamists are more open-minded than Mormons, and more intelligent. Mormons will
wake up when they're leaders tell them to and not a day sooner. Like
polygamists, Mormons do exactly what they're told to do.
Go after their 501(c)(3) tax exempt status, like the gov't threatened to
do when Mormons refused to give blacks the priesthood. Hit Mormons in
their pocket books. Look at the polygamist branch of Mormons. Polygamy thrives in Colorado City, Arizona, where thousands of American families (10,000 people) are systematically stripped of their democratic rights and women & children are abused. They cost taxpayers $25 to $35 million dollars a year in public benefits.
Mormons spend 20 million on Prop 8 and not a penny to help women and children escaping polygamy - pretty dumb, right. Check out this clip: http://www.bankingonheaven.com/
Driven1... Your choice is to oppress.
Why would anybody "choose" to be gay ?? Why would anybody choose to live their life oppressed if they didn't have to?? One is indeed born and developed as gay, and the choice is only to accept one's homosexuality, or to repress it.
HOWEVER, it is indeed your choice to believe in God and in your religion... and it is your choice to live outside the boundaries of reality and reason. Please don't let your freedom of choice oppress other's freedom if they don't happen live by your chosen religious doctrine. Your assumption that there is a God is only a common belief, it is not fact. You are entitled to believe that, but you are not entitled to oppress others by believing what you do. If I believe the evolution of the human race was formed through extraterrestrials inseminating the apes, that would be my belief, and I have every right to that belief, but I have no right to assume that is true for anybody but myself. Your belief in God is as personal as my belief, and we have each the right to believe. But I would never assume my beliefs supersede yours.
well, Kevin, I'm FUMING too.
I'm a New Yorker, and I wonder, am I the only one who is as angry at the gay community (as I am at the H8'ers) for letting this happen?
Where the F was the gay community and the "powerati" when it became obvious that the 'No on 8' campaign was fumbling the ball? I mean Jesus-F-Christ, everyone we knew in CA was talking about the terrible "No" campaign by mid-September ... how come the 'powerati' didn't use some of their power THEN to turn the NO campaign around?
I'm also ticked-off that my husband and I gave half a month's salary, which we couldn't afford, to No on 8, because it was of national importance ... and now we see that a lot of very affluent gay Californians (net worths well north of $2-3m) whom we know wrote checks for F-ing $200, $500, $1000, or in other words, less than they spend on a pair of shoes. I'm so disgusted with these friends of ours I'll have to avoid them for months.
And to finish this rant, where the F is the powerati now?
Why isn't any one person or organization (hello HRC?) taking the lead to organise boycotts, protests, and non-violent shut-downs of Sacramento until this wrong is corrected?
I'd like to see so-called Powerati wield a little of their power & MONEY to send the state of California a big loud message: IT'S NOT ACCEPTABLE TO VOTE ON OUR CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE GAY COMMUNITY WILL SHUT GOV'T DOWN UNTIL THIS GETS CORRECTED.
yeah right. where were all the obscenely rich gay (and supposedly gay-friendly) people (besides Ellen) when we needed large donations and loud support? where the f*** was Suze Orman? where the f*** was Oprah (who owns a big-ass piece of California)? where was Madonna, who made her fortune on the backs of gays?
Kamedas,
Thank you for your response. It was passionate, but a bit out of sorts with your own argument of "reality and reason." Being able to understand and choose to follow the boundaries God sets allows me to have an open mind, and yet not be "so open-minded that [my] brains leak out." (Steve Taylor: Whatever Happened to Sin?) Every right you demanded through obtaining gay marriage rights is already available, except one: redefining a concept you did not invent. Marriage was the first covenant ever made between God and Mankind. There is a sacred aspect here that cannot be avoided.
My "belief" in God may not be accepted fact for you, but you do not define reality by changing meanings and policies for society, and then imposing them on everyone else in society through the abuse of "tolerance education" in the classrooms of our schools. Schools in Massachusetts claim that they don't even need to report to the parents if they are going to present the controversial topic to parents of same sex marriage. Rather, the schoolhouse has become your church, where you are evangelizing children with the effort of overthrowing the baseline beliefs of their parents.
So now, who is oppressing? That's pretty manipulative and underhanded. To demand a right to change my child's thinking is not your right. When they are of the age of accountability, then you have an argument. Otherwise, you are undermining the fabric of responsible parenthood in the name of civil liberties. There is nothing civil about this.
Christians do not commit hate crimes. The bitter hatred seems to be high-pressure blasted from the other direction.
There is a Way, and there is hope. I can tolerate and engage in positive friendships with homosexuals, but I do not then change my understanding of morality and good that is consistent with the very nature of the one who defines those things for time and eternity. If a redefinition of marriage prevails in this nation, Christians will continue to love the homosexual community, and you will see love win individuals out, one-by-one. The reality of the lifestyle is dark and dismal. I have too many friends who have revealed this. I am not an uninformed bystander throwing prose.
My fear is that just as the Israelites closed their ears and hearts to God's word in the prophet Isaiah's day, you have also chosen to do now. How do you see reality in that way? Clouded.
Break free, see clear, and know the hope that lives within a movement that turned this world right-side up once already. Even with a history of man's hand fouling it up, there is clearly the hand of God and His transforming grace overriding it. In the end, you choose. That's the nature of your daily beast. Devouring yourself for the sake of a right to redefine a concept you neither thought of, nor have honored is simply wrong.
Thank you,
Driven1
One year and 21 days; that's how long African-American men and women walked to work, in winter's cold and summer's humid heat, one, three, five miles each way, to end Montgomery's bigoted racist segregationist policies.
Fifty years later, in modern California, it only takes a few cars to shut down traffic in any traffic corridor. Imagine the effectiveness of civil-disobedience of 4 cars, astride, putting their cars in park for 5 or 10 minutes, rush hour, in the Orange crush (I-5 in Anaheim), the I-405 corridor in San Diego, along CA-99 in Bakersfield, and in Sacramento. Dozens of places in H8er territory. A few dozen protesters, each and every day. Make their lives as miserable as they make our.
And yes, many same-sex marriage supporters will be greatly inconvenienced. Well maybe they will be a hell of a lot more vocal about doing what is right.
Stand up, God-damn-it! Enough, already. Enough is enough. That was President-elect Obama's charge to end the miserable conduct of the Bush Administration. Now, not tomorrow, is the time to change the miserable conduct of the H8ers.
Make it personal for everyone that civil-rights belong to everyone.
Were these ritzy gays OUT campaigning before the elections, or just whining now after the fact? I saw Ellen with John McCain, but I haven't heard much from big names in the biz.
What the Mormon Church has done to gays in inexcusable, but what they're NOT doing about POLYGAMY is criminal.
Mormons spend 20-25 million on Prop 8 and completely ignore 50-100,000 polygamists around Utah who practice tyranny over women and children and live on taxpayer handouts.
And don't fall for the "Mormons have nothing to do with polygamists" line. That's like saying America had nothing to do with slavery. Mormons started polygamy in Utah and powerful Mormon legislatures, and the Mormon people, have ignored the problem for over 100 years. Oh ye hypocrites behind the Zion Curtain!
Watch the video:
http://www.bankingonheaven.com/
BANKING ON HEAVEN . COM
If the gay community had any balls at at all they would be protesting the black churches just as much if not more for this. Ya know, the group that voted 2 to 1 against gay marriage. And the reason they voted it down was worse than the mormons or the evangelicals. The black community is socially conservative? Please...every group needs someone to look down on, no one wants to be at the very bottom of the social order. Blacks have been shitting on gays in their communities for this reason for decades. And if the gay groups had any balls they would protest outside their door, not little old mormon ladies doors. But will they? Of course not, their a bunch of pussies.
The author's statement that many in the gay community blame Obama for not standing up against Prop 8 is ridiculous. I understand the sheltered vacuum of living in California (i have spent a considerable amount of time there), but Obama wanted to win an election not get more votes from a demographic that wildly supported him. Who were gays going to vote for in this election? And how many states allow gay marriage? Gays vote overwhelmingly for democrats, so Obama had them in his corner, and only 3 states allowed gay marriage during the campaign. I guarantee that Obama would've lost the election if he came out vocally in support of gay marriage. And that's not really bias showing, I voted for McCain, but support gay marriage. As a straight person it really doesn't make any difference if gays can get married. And my church's beliefs/rules shouldn't be enforced by the government.
democracy is mob-rules.
please ... stop asking for permission!
call your friends, set the date & marry.
any state that can force one group [church]
to accept another group into their club
is too strong.
if Jesus, Mary & Joseph start a club,
will you ask your nanny to make them let you join?
even if the nanny says you can hang out in their club,
will they ever accept you or just whisper behind your back?
stop being a follower & a beggar
DO UR OWN THING
thank you &
Peace Out
gee PauPer, how f-ing profound of you.
are you really that dumb?
If all of the African American votes were subtracted from the yes vote and added to the no vote the proposition still would have failed.
Listen, the problem isn't convincing African Americans to not vote it down. According to my gay African Americans that I have spoken to, its convincing black gays to vote for gay marriage. Most of them are for gay marriage but don't view it as high on their pantheon of issues they face as African Americans. They cite driving while black, AIDS-HIV, voter registration among blacks, broken families and non-violent drug convictions as the main issues facing blacks on the political level.
All of my gay friends attend church and do not give religious reasons to me as to why they don't support gay marriage. Just food for thought.
Driven1, I am a 38-year-old heterosexual female. Through my life, I have known and had close friendships with several gay people, and have had friendly acquaintences with any others. You say that "The reality of the lifestyle is dark and dismal."
I want to tell you why I think you are basically wrong, but sometimes right.
Gay is no more dark or dismal than straight. Unless, of course, you are being told by the society around you that there is something wrong with you, or else you'd be straight. Or unless straight people feel entitled to insult or even physically hurt you if you are gay.
What I understand is that yes, while you feel like you have to hide who you actually are, and even try to deny it to yourself, it's pretty dark and dismal. However, when you feel free to be who you are and unafraid that others will despise you for it, then finding you are gay is no more traumatic that finding out that members of the opposite gender don't have cooties (which, at least for me, was a tad traumatizing at first).
"Dark and dismal" is what society puts on gay people, not a product of gay in and of itself.
Government should not be in the business of declaring anything sacred, which includes marriage.
Civil unions only for all, straight or gay. Let each couple's personal beliefs and supporting community determine if it's a marriage.
Secular government now!
@mikemoore, you wrote that you
"gave half a month's salary, which we couldn't afford"
&
"IT'S NOT ACCEPTABLE TO VOTE ON OUR CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE GAY COMMUNITY WILL SHUT GOV'T DOWN"
so you tried
to buy into a permission slip scheme? ...from the govt!
the same govt that you want to shut down?
& you spent living expense $ on a vote,
even though you feel that civil rights
are not acceptable vote subjects?
to answer your question:
No, I'm not "that" dumb
like I suggested, stop asking permission, stop voting,
stop wasting your earnings on govt licenses.
live & let live
Peace Out Mike
Thanks for responding Uncool.
Look, this is not some difficult thing to understand. Sin of any nature is by it's design dark and dismal. There's no two ways about it. You can choose to deny it, but the fruit of sin bears itself out in the end.
I thought, as you, that it must be a product of intimidation, but honest, open discussion with homosexual friends revealed quite another side. I'm not the bearer of bad news, they are. This is not a "boy-in-a-bubble" moment for me. 20 years in the military, relating to many in that microcosm hotbed of our society, taught me many things.
Thanks for trying Uncool. I appreciate the effort.
-driven1
To driven1: It's only "dark and dismal" the way YOU do it. I feel sorry for your female partners too.
To the writer of the essay: I am a hetrosexual, old white woman. I say it's time for Hollywood to begin an educational campaign to teach evangelicals who you are and what you deserve to expect. To whit, your civil rights same as everybody else. They are mostly teachable. Go into their churchs. Be brave.
Driven
The right to swing your bronze-age sky-god ends where my civil rights begin.
Bekks10, I agree with you 100%. If marriage is a sacred, religious institution, then the government shouldn't be licensing it at all. Gay or straight, people should get the contractual aspects of marriage from the courthouse in the form of a civil union. The only test to decide who can access a civil union contract should be: Are these people consenting adults?
yeah, PauPer, you are that dumb if you can't empathize with those of us who want to marry.
maybe you have a family you can trust with medical decisions if you become incapacitated. Our families would use medical incapacity to keep us apart (even though we've been together over 20 years.) Marriage protects us from that.
maybe you don't care or want to leave money or possessions or pensions to someone when you die. I do want to make sure that if I die today, that all I have goes to my lover and best friend of 20 years, a guy whose been positive that whole and can no longer work. Marriage protects him in ways no amount of estate planning can.
obviously, I could keep going down the list, but for now I'll just say the same to you that I say to the bigots: I don't tell you how to live your life, so please don't tell me how to live mine, and please don't presume to know whether civil marriage is an important issue to my family or not.
Driven1:
Oh, so dark, so dark.
So many carefully phrased comments.
20 years under the weight of a military, so many unhappy gay friends, so much wisdom to impart.
Such a struggle to appear reasonable, un-obsessed, and unburdened by an onerous, propulsive need to share your thoughts and to explain your raison d'etre to us.
So much concern about this issue.
Thank you for your time and efforts here. But we cannot help you with your dilemma.
We are busy saving ourselves.
mikemoore,
I think that you're too busy questioning my empathathy & intelligence, how tolerant of you.
so you're missing my point.
which is:
every time you ask permission, you empower.
get the govt out of marriage
get the govt out of family planning tax schemes
stop thinking that democracy will save you
individual rights and group privileges are incompatible!
you dont want to be told how to live your life but
you participate in mob-rules democracy?
democracy is all about telling other ppl what to do!
I understand your list of complaints & inequalities
but laws will always favor groups over individuals
democracy will always favor the larger group.
bank accts & property can be put in joint ownership.
medical rights & pensions, I understand are a different beast.
my hope is for a free-market savior, not a govt law.
some companies honor your choice of survivorship rights.
rather than using govt coercion to change a selfish company,
only work for companies that honor you!
start your own business.
boycott any business that is run by bigots.
but to force other ppl to change is to become the aggressor!
peace is the answer, democracy is incompatible with
peaceful, voluntary interaction.
stop begging for crumbs, bake your own cake.
yeah, thanks for keeping it about the issues, rather than attacking me personally.
peace out
So, where were all these "power brokers" before the election? They seemed to all stay on the sidelines. Yet they have the money and connections and talent to have made a huge difference in shaping the election narrative.
Thank you.
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