Best spokesman for the Gay Community

[Guest]

The Phallus Palace: With all the talk about blue state values and red state values, one would think that a blue state group like GLADD or a famous actor such as Ellen Degeneres would use their fame to expose the ignorance of homophobia.

Or maybe a red state member of the Log Cabin Republicans or someone like Mary Cheney might expose the ignorance of homophobia.

One would find it absurd that a Brit with a typical Orthodox Jewish upbringing and who is still a practicing Jew and who is not gay but pretends to be a Queen for laughs would be the one who brings bigotry against gays in the US to the forefront.

But if one thinks about who is most effective at exposing homophobia in the US, one should think about and thank this guy. Sacha Baron Cohen, who on the Da Ali G Show plays Bruno, a Queen Austrian, is the most effective spokesperson for the gay community at illuminating the fact that gays still face prejustice and discrimination by some segments of American society.

The Da Ali G Show is seen on HBO by millions of Americans who laugh at the ignorance of homophobes. Cohen should win some kind of award from GLADD and other groups that are supposed to bring gay discrimination to forefront.

[KinkGuy]

For someone purporting to be "100% heterosexual" you spend an awful lot of time starting and posting to gay topics. Issues?

[Guest]

The Phallus Palace: I just thought that many would find it surprising that a foreigner and a religious man acting as a queen may be the best instrument the gay community has to illustrate that bigotry against gays still exists in America.

Why do you think I have issues? Are only gays allowed to talk about gay subjects?

[aloofman]

There are two problems with your theory:

1) He isn't the first straight man to comically point out how silly homophobia is, so he isn't unique in this regard.

2) His HBO show is not all that popular in the U.S. I'll bet 80% of Americans wouldn't recognize his name or the show if you described it to them. That hardly positions him as a spokesperson.

I think the next frontier is probably a gay team sports star. There has never been an top-level American gay athlete in a team sport who was out while he was still playing. A few have come out after they retired, but none were big stars. And of course it's very possible that they were gay athletes we didn't know about. It's going to take a pretty thick-skinned guy to pull this off, but I think it could happen. He'll most likely have to be a star before he comes out though, since people will already have seen him excel and he'll have won respect from his peers.

[jonb]

And it's GLAAD, not GLADD. And yes, homophobia is a disease. The American Psychiatric Association says that it's related to arousal at gay sex. While the DSM-IV doesn't specifically mention homophobia, it is a type of "sexual disorder not otherwise specified", because most psychiatrists agree homophobia stems from "feelings of inadequacy concerning sexual performance or other traits related to self-imposed standards of masculinity or femininity" and "persistent and marked distress about sexual orientation".

As for red/blue, there isn't that much difference. Actually, in a precinct-by-precinct basis in any given state, stereotypically "blue" neighborhoods (e.g., rich and suburban) voted Republican while stereotypically "red" neighborhoods (e.g., rural and poor) voted Democrat.

[SomeGuyOverThere]

In reference to the Ali G show, disturbingly, people here in Scotland see him as a role model, as cool, not someone to laugh at...

says a lot I think...