Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (March 16, 2007)

IT'S BEEN A BUSY WEEK HERE IN LAKE HYPOCRITE
Garrison Keillor here, y'all. The week got off to humdinger of a start when I penned one of my thoughtful essays for Salon.com. In it, I opine on the state of American marriages and lament the good ol' days when folks got hitched, had a few sprouts, raised 'em, and that was that. There was none of this extended family nonsense, what with exes and step-this, step-that, and blended families. And there were definitely none of them flamboyant, chartreuse-wearing homosexuals raising kids and mucking it up for the rest of us.

Anywho, what else happened in Lake Hypocrite this week? Jason, my son and the spit-polished apple of my eye from my first marriage, stopped in for a visit to see Maia, his half-sister by my third wife. That's wife Jenny, who folks sometimes confuse with Margaret, whom I never actually married. Margaret and I were just lovers while working at Prairie Home Companion when I ditched her to marry wife No. 2, Ulla. Ulla and I didn't have any kids, but we might have except that marriage ended when I slept with the woman teaching me to speak Danish. Anywho, Jenny and I are very happy with our nice, all-American family.

My gout was kicking up like a mule on Viagra, so I didn't get to make my usual rounds of Lake Hypocrite. Instead, I read all the email I got about my column. BTW, that email address is garrison@blindspot.com. Newt Gingrich wrote to say he and wife No. 3 couldn't agree with me more about the state of marriage being worse than having a rash on your tush during an August heat wave. Rush Limbaugh even called to congratulate me. I guess since divorce No. 3, he's got more time on his hands than a bear hibernating in a Minnesota winter.

Well, time to change my Depends, so that's it for now from Lake Hypocrite, where all the women are fertile, all the men are overweight but straight, and all the queers have little dogs and striped couches.

YOU CAN LEAD A HORSE TO HOMOPHOBIA, BUT YOU CAN'T MAKE HIM SEE IT
The film 300 opened with a bang this weekend, hauling in a record opening for March of $73 million. This way outdraws last week's homophobic entry, Wild Hogs. Oy. We've been covering 300 for a little while now and have pretty well documented what we think is wrong with it. What's been fascinating this week is to watch what others have to say about the movie. I think my favorite headline has to be "It's Spartan hotties versus Persian trannies."

On the plus side, most reviewers acknowledged the film's inherent homophobia, frequently referring to King Xerxes as an 8-foot, black drag queen not unlike RuPaul. This just has to bug director Zack Snyder, who told Entertainment Weekly that he's been told his movie is homophobic, but he just doesn't see it. Hmm, might a little bit harder to not "see it" when everyone else is pointing it out. Many also point out the irony of Snyder's use of homophobia to make it all right for straight boys to ogle nearly naked men for two-plus hours.

On the downside, many of those same reviewers who got the homophobia then gloss over it as just business. It's just a movie, and whatayagonna do? That doesn't terribly surprise me since most of those reviewers are straight and want to just enjoy the movie without having to feel guilty. What is considerably more disturbing has been the reaction among a significant portion of gay folks. Over on Gay.com you'll find plenty of comments from gay guys along the lines of:

"I JUST wanna see the boxes on these guys … an[d] who cares what the message is"

or

"Mmmmm … love the Greeks, specially when they're all muscled, half-naked, sweaty, and in large numbers like one big alpha male orgie."

Yeah, who cares what nasty things are said about gay people as long as you get to ogle really butch guys' boxes? Are there really people this shallow? (It's a rhetorical question. Sigh.)

Our friends at Queerty had a slightly different take, pointing out that a recent Pew Research poll shows that over half of Americans aged 18–25 support gay marriage, which is a much higher proportion than among their elders. Queerty also says: "While negative stereotypes still abound, it seems to us that the positive representations far outweigh the negative. Thus, more people approve of gays, more people have gays in their lives, more people understand the difference between fantasy and reality. … the idea that one movie will demolish centuries of progress strikes as a bit ridiculous."

To the second point, we never claimed 300 would demolish centuries of progress. To the first point, I would say the reason positive representations outweigh negative representations isn't because Hollywood and Madison Avenue suddenly got a queer conscience and decided to put out positive representations. I'd suggest it has to do with some gays chiming in and saying, "Um, that movie is a homophobic piece of crap, and we're calling you on it." For that we can thank GLAAD, the Commercial Closet and all the other gay groups making the effort to monitor popular culture. But we appreciate Queerty's input.