“Gay” & “Lesbian”: What Are They Afraid Of?
by Dave VanderPol
The fundamentalist-owned-and-operated American Family Association (AFA) is widely known for attacking businesses and organizations that promote a GLBT-friendly agenda. But did you know that they actually go so far as to ban the word from their “news” website, OneNewsNow.com?
The AFA website uses the slogan “Your Latest News from a Christian Perspective.” In addition to op-eds from antigay authors, the site relies on content from the Associated Press (AP). AFA routinely re-writes AP news to put their anti-gay spin on things. For instance, placing the words marriage and wedding in quotes when referring to same-sex couples and swapping out the phrase “groups that oppose same-sex marriage” to read “groups that support one-man, one-woman marriage.”
The AFA website also uses a “filter” to replace every instance of the word “gay” with “homosexual.” So when olympic athlete Tyson Gay ran the fastest 100m of all time earlier this summer, the headline at OneNewsNow.com read “Homosexual Eases Into 100 Final At Olympic trials.”
Howard Fendrich’s AP story, modified by the American Family Association for readers of OneNewsNow.com, included the following amusing lines:
“Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.”
“Wearing a royal blue uniform with red and white diagonal stripes across the front, along with matching shoes, all in a tribute to 1936 Olympic star Jesse Owens, Homosexual dominated the competition.”
“Everyone expected Homosexual to make the U.S. team.”
After the laughs and shaking of heads, surely instances like this should give people everywhere pause. The American Family Association’s fixation with being anti-gay — right down to the word itself — serves neither America nor the many families that call her home!
Gxx & Lxxxxxx Film Series
Here in the Metro Louisville (Kentucky) public display of both the words “Gay” and “Lesbian” came under attack from parents horrified that they might have to “explain what a ‘gay’ is” or explain what a ‘lesbian’ is” to their children.
The phrase “Gay & Lesbian Film Series” that appeared on the marquee at Village 8 Theatres in suburban Louisville drew an average of ten complaints per day for nearly three weeks, according to a theatre manager. Under the stress of the constant stream of criticism, the management finally relented and edited the marquee text to read “G & L Film Series”.
General complaints about the film festival that began in early June, including specific outrage over the marquee wording, came in by phone and e-mail and at least one very heated face-to-face exchange between an anti-gay patron and a manager in the theatre’s lobby. The angry customer screamed, “By showing these gay films, you have unleashed the moral equivalent of a terrorist attack on the citizens of our community!” The verbal trade went on for nearly minutes.
Despite all of the homophobic protests – and even in the wake of substituting “G” and “L” for “Gay” and “Lesbian” on the theatre marquee – ticket sales for the film series were excellent. In fact, one of the two opening films sold more films than any other film shown the first week of June.
This article appears in the July 2008 issue of THE LETTER newspaper (www.TheLetterOnline.com).
