Ann Rostow: Make It Seventeen Minutes of Fame for Davis

By Ann Rostow

Make It Seventeen Minutes of Fame for Davis

Grandstanding Kentucky clerk Kim Davis has been in and out of the news for the last couples of weeks, continu­ing to mess with marriage licenses in Rowan County and filing various pointless motions in federal court. Honestly, dear readers, I’m having trouble sustaining my interest in this pathetic creature, but I’ll do my best to summarize my hazy sense of her recent shenanigans.

Ordered not to interfere with mar­riage licenses issued by her deputies, she arguably violated court instruc­tions by changing the language on the paperwork to the degree that some people now question whether or not the adulterated licenses are valid. The ACLU is on it.

Her pro-bono rightwing Christian lawyers have continued litigating for reasons unclear. Publicity? Fund rais­ing? Surely not.

She has switched from being a Demo­crat to being a Republican, one of the few decisions on her part that I can wholeheartedly understand and endorse.

Her lawyers announced that some people in Peru put together a rally on her behalf that drew a crowd of 100,000 to a big sports stadium. Plus, they had the pictures to prove it un­til it became clear that the pictures were from a generic prayer meeting held in May of last year. It looks as if Davis’ lawyers were duped by some Peruvian politician who told them all about the “rally” and provided the fake evidence.

Finally, the Pope told reporters that everyone has the right to stand up for their religious convictions in a state­ment that many thought signaled sup­port for Davis. However, the transla­tion of his remarks were vague and could mean anything, so make of it what you will. Personally, I was a little Poped-out after all the cover­age. There’s something endearing about the guy, even though he repre­sents a patriarchal and homophobic institution. Still, the infatuated media barrage was a bit much. You would have thought Christ Himself had floated down from heaven to address a joint session of Congress complete with halo, sandals, white robe and stigmata.

I like his smile. Is that wrong of me?

(Editor’s Note: News that the Pope met with Kim Davis came in as we were going to press and after this piece was filed. We expect that Ann Rostow might have more to say about the matter in the next issue!)

Ick Flick

I haven’t seen the movie, but I have been reading the very very bad re­views for Roland Emmerich’s “Stone­wall,” reportedly inaccurate, badly written, and horrendously dull. That’s too bad because the Stonewall riots marked a critical turning point for gay rights. Indeed, the definition of the “modern gay rights movement” starts in June of 1969, when the most­ly trans and minority patrons of the Stonewall Inn fought back against what was then a commonplace po­lice raid. The gay rights movement, such as it was, went from defense to offense and began building the insti­tutions and community infrastructure that eventually brought us to within a stone’s throw of equality.

Before Stonewall, early gay and lesbi­ans groups were, by necessity, secre­tive and focused on what you might term small-ball activism. But their very existence demanded the type of courage that no one born after 1950 has ever been obliged to reach for. To portray people like Frank Kameny and other members of the Mattachine Society of New York as anything oth­er than the heroes they were is grossly offensive, yet Emmerich turns them into sniveling cowards (so I read).

Worse, reviewers say the movie is di­dactic and terribly written and well, check out Rotten Tomatoes for your­self and you’ll find nine out of ten reporters straining to articulate just how much they hate this film. Com­ing up with a Midwestern white guy to trigger the revolution is just the fi­nal slap in history’s face.

Shades of White

Why do screenwriters so often dumb things down with platitudes and for­mulaic tropes. Mel and I were watch­ing Grey’s Anatomy the other night when they had a plot featuring two girls who fall in love, and go out and try to get hit by a train because one of the mothers wants to send her daugh­ter to an antigay camp. In the end, the husband erupts and subjects the bad mom to a trite tirade about love and acceptance. Shonda? The 1990s wants its script back!

I can’t believe I’m complaining about a gay friendly scenario, and I’m not really. I’m complaining about a lack of imagination, and a lack of nuance when it comes to gay and lesbian char­acters and story lines. We’ve come far enough that we can afford to see a few bad apples, confused ne’er do wells and insecure nut cases coming out of our community. An activist who can’t see the forest for the trees. A superfi­cial gym rat. Or how about a crazed lesbian who makes her ex-lover drive her down the M5 at knifepoint?

Loyal readers will recognize one of my favorite “lesbians behaving bad­ly” in the last example. But, in fact, there have been so many true stories of lesbians behaving badly in the his­tory of this column that we sisters re­ally do deserve to be represented by a fictional psychopath from time to time. And yet, we know why the gays and lesbians on screen these days are almost always the good guys, don’t we? The minute some writer puts a butcher knife in our hands we’ll prob­ably skewer them for hate scripts or antigay propaganda. We shouldn’t do that! That’s all I’m saying.

Chip of Fools

I have my dear cousin (Happy Birth­day!) to thank for the following break­ing news: the decision by Pepsico’s Frito-Lay to manufacture a few pallets of rainbow colored Doritos in order to raise money for the “It Gets Better” project. Everyone who gave ten bucks to the organization started by Seattle-based activist Dan Savage received the gay-friendly chips, a publicity effort that should hardly draw much com­mentary one way or another.

Ah, but we underestimate our foes, who are ever on the lookout for even the most innocuous point of pride on which to hook their hostile observa­tions. Monica Cole, who runs One Million Moms, decried Pepsico’s pro­motion of “anti-Christian bigotry.” And Mike Huckabee wondered in a letter how the company could align itself with the “vicious vitriol” of Dan Savage and his “hate group.”

The project, as most of you know, grew out of the viral YouTube vid­eos of thousands of people reassur­ing bullied young gay kids that their school days will eventually end and that, as the title suggests, it gets bet­ter. The aim of this vicious, bigoted, anti-Christian group is, um, suicide prevention. Have Cole and Huckabee ever heard of the notion of picking your battles?

Siri, We Hardly Knew You

So, last time around I deliberately skipped a story about how Vladimir Putin called rock star Elton John on the phone to discuss the Russian an­tigay policies that John in particular has been attacking. The story didn’t have solid news sources and it seemed far-fetched, so I would have had to do a bunch of research in order to write about it and I didn’t care enough to follow through.

It turned out that John had been punked by some Russian jokesters who pretended to put Putin and a translator on the phone. Chuckle chuckle chuckle.

Now, Putin has actually called the singer/activist and is reportedly plan­ning to meet with John to discuss gay rights at some point in the future. Pu­tin also told Sixty Minutes that Russia’s antigay policies have been exagger­ated by the western press and that, in fact, gays are not persecuted at all! The only thing that Putin cares about, he says, is that children are not pres­sured by media or groups. Hmmm.

Meanwhile, Russian officials are in­vestigating Apple for a series of emojis that show same-sex couples and fami­lies. The company was sued over the emojis last spring by some Russian guy whose child asked for an explana­tion, but the story is back in the news this week, as I guess Apple is being ordered to remove the images from Russian phones. I’m not sure how that’s done.

For any of you who might be laugh­ing, remember that an iPhone-shaped memorial to Steve Jobs was removed from the St Petersburg University campus last fall after Apple CEO Tim Cook came out as gay. Once Tim Cook began to “advocate for sodomy,” the authorities determined, the tribute to his predecessor sudden­ly violated Russia’s 2013 law against promoting homosexuality.

Finally, while we’re using Apple as an example of Putin-esque intolerance, the Russian version of Siri, which was developed by a Russian third party company, comes up with an array of odd responses to simple questions like: “Are there any gay bars near me?” or, “Tell me about gay marriage.” Instead of answering, the program claims to be embarrassed, accuses the user of being rude or avoids the ques­tion, and this attitude is maintained regardless of where the user is based.

I was just watching a video by a gay Russian guy who was located in Eng­land. My favorite response was to the question: “How to register a gay mar­riage in England?” Siri replied: “So now you are swearing obscenities and then you are going to eat with those very hands!”

All of this is sort of funny and ridicu­lous. The increase in antigay violence since the law’s passage is anything but.

That’s Amore!

What else is new, you ask, as you so often ask at about this point in our conversation. I like the story of the gay man who drove 80 miles to the pizza place in Indiana that earned headlines a few months back when the owners announced they would not cater a gay wedding. Robin Trev­ins picked up a few large pizzas and drove them back to serve at his wed­ding, scoring a nice political coup perhaps, but not winning any points from his guests, one imagines.

Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indi­ana, is one of those businesses that has allegedly cashed in a bunch of money in donations from sympathetic Chris­tians. Memories owners reportedly banked $842,000 and change over a six-month period after taking their mean-spirited stand against gay cou­ples. Their page on GoFundMe be­moans the fact that they may never be able to open their doors again thanks to the backlash from the GLBT com­munity and allies. But you know what? It looks like the cheesy bastards kept their doors open after all, and raked in the big bucks anyway.

Meanwhile, bad girl rapper Azealea Banks jammed herself towards the front of the line of people getting off a Delta flight, squirming from her First Class seat in the sixth row before bumping into the guy in the third row who was blocking her way—because he was ahead of her! Banks fought with the guy, accused him of hitting her when he was getting his bag out of the rack, and then called the flight at­tendant a faggot. Much of the childish scene was caught on video and aired on TMZ.

Naturally, she got in trouble for this display, at which point she called gay white men no better than the KKK, tweeted that the gay community was weak, and suggested she herself no longer wanted to be a part of the com­munity. I guess she was sort of bisexual or something, but you know what? I’m happy to let her drop out if that’s what she wants. You go, girl! Literally.

Oh, and serial shouter Rives Miller Grogan, 50, has accepted a plea deal, and prosecutors will ask that he serve 30 days behind bars for screaming antigay nonsense during oral argu­ments on marriage equality before the Supreme Court last April.

Grogan, who yelled out that gays will “burn in hell for eternity,” also tried to interrupt Obama’s second inaugu­ration from the upper branches of a tree, after which he was banned from Washington D.C. by court order. He also managed to take the field during the 2012 World Series to display a sign that said “Abortion Is Sin” on one side, and “Romney Ryan” on the other. In fact, the list of Grogan’s public antics is quite lengthy, and bizarre enough to give the man a quasi Fred Phelps sta­tus. Not quite. I think Fred will always live on in a category by himself.

arostow@aol.com