Your Gay of the Week: Dustin Lance Black

I didn't see the Anderson Cooper 360, but a couple of weeks ago, Lance was the speaker at UCLA's 12th annual Lavendar Graduation. (Lavendar grad is for the LGBT students who want to be a part of a commencement ceremony that celebrates who they are. It honors students and faculty who have contributed to the LGBT community on campus.)  It also honors an outstanding alumnus and this year it was Lance.

After his introduction and his acceptance of the award, he spoke. It was one of the most inspiring speeches I've heard in a very long time. He quoted Martin Luther King, Harvey Milk, Julian Bond, Ghandi and a few more people who fought in a non violent way for the civil rights of their community.  He told the grads it was time to "agitate" because there is still much to be done.  He received two standing ovations during the speech. 

His age notwishstanding he is a force to be reckoned with. His work in the film industry is brilliant, but I think he has an even better career in the politcal arena as an advocate for LGBT concerns.   

Isn't this more a vote of confidence for Dustin since he was disrespected online publicly too? I saw the live broadcast of his comments and although nice it wasn't anything we haven't heard before really.

but as a previous poster said, he didn't say anything we haven't heard before.  He won because we wanted to show him support for his sex pic thingy.  I know that's why I voted for him.  Let's call a spade a spade or whatever the saying is.

Maybe the folks on this site (and other gay environments) are sick of hearing it but the general public isn't.

The things he said can NEVER be said too often.

If someone was on CNN talking about the lives of gay teens every day in 5 different languages it wouldn't be too much.

We have to rememeber that the rest of this country isn't always looking at things through our (sometimes jaded) gay goggles.

There was a wonderful short film on lLOGO (not to be pluggy) about this gay teen in rural Penn that just blew my mind and it was about right now but it felt like what this kid was going through was from the 1950s. He was completely isolated from any gay community but bravely just trying to be out and live his life. Mad cool.

Glad we can move on cuz there is so much important work to be done.

"That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment." (Bayard Rustin) ** "Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common" (Dorothy Parker)

i didn't vote for him because of his 'sex scandal' -- hell, it's hardly a scandal. nobody else seems to have picked up on it.

as for "we've heard it before" - - that could be a problem. we should all stop telling people that we're equal and why we want equal rights, because hey, it's all been said before, over and over again.

what should we say then? any suggestions?

 

not because he is great spokesman ( but I do like his style). My vote was aginst teh idiots who would let "safe sex" be an obsessive issue. Hey - except for masturbation there is NO safe sex. So either go celibate or buy a Fleshlight.

He's got great hair.  LOL

I like him but I have to admit this whole sex pic thingy tarnished him a little bit.  And honestly, I wasn't surprised that he had a sex tape or he had unsafe sex because I watched that whole gay bus to Burning Man docu that he was part of, that "Lance" was young and less "evolved" and would totally get into trouble than the new and improved award-winning Dustin.

I have nothing against DLB but I find it hard to give immediate credibility to someone just because they wrote a film about a gay icon, won an Oscar for it, and gave an emotional acceptance speech. Sure he is cute and can write but (and this is in no way meant to slam DLB at all) we need to not instantly "follow" someone and what they say just because they have a great look and a good choice of words. Case in point, Perez Hilton led the voices on Carrie Prejean which in many ways had me see many gay allies just shake their head over his scratch on the chalkboard way about him. In the end we lost ground here only because we let a self-promoter take our message and draw white grease paint on it.

I think in general we as people in general give too much credance to celebrities to speak for us when in many cases their fame is the only chip they can muster. Now DLB gave one part of the story and did it without looking like a fool and was well spoken. It was also nice to see a fresh face. But we must also bring out the regular gay Jack and lesbian Jill and their partners to show this is not a Hollywood cause, it is about our daily lives.

If fictional soap opera characters can get to be Gay of the Week for so many weeks that they need to be retired to the "Hall of Fame" without so much as a thought, I don't see why an actual gay man's being selected should be questioned so much.

Does it really matter why folks voted for DLB this particular week?

Maybe some folks voted because of the photos but it isn't fair to just assume that's the only reason. 

People have free will and do actually think about things differently and some folks, many folks may have different priorities and may have just thought what he said, the way he said it, the fact that he said it ROCKED!.

I would have voted for DLB just for being on television talking abut gay teens and suicide and for generally being a strong figure of young people speaking out out behalf of gay issues that week because the other candidates didn't move me as much.

Maybe if all 3 of the other contenders had been other folks involved in politics or philanthropy or activism, then there could be room to question his  winning.

But given the choices, I don't see why anyone would question his winning for last week.

"That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment." (Bayard Rustin)  **   "Heterosexuality is not normal, it's just common" (Dorothy Parker)