Heroes and zeros
Richard Burnett
rburnett@hour.ca
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Marvel Comics supervillain Ultron
photo: Courtesy Marvel Comics
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Here is my 12th annual column of the year's heroes and zeros.Zero Actor Isaiah Washington, who was fired from Grey's Anatomy by ABC after calling his gay cast mate T.R. Knight a faggot.
Zero Republican pundit Ann Coulter, who called Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a faggot. If she can get away with calling Edwards a faggot, I can call Coulter the C-word.
Zero Gay comic Scott Thompson, who reportedly outraged his audience at the Gay Softball World Series in Phoenix when he dissed gay icon Kathy Griffin and then used the N-word.
Hero Cyndi Lauper, for organizing the True Colors tour to promote gay rights.
Hero Marvel Comics, for introducing the world's first transsexual cyborg, supervillain Ultron.
Zero Montreal gay cruising bar Le Stud, for enforcing its segregated men-only door policy and throwing out a woman, Audrey Vachon, last May. But worth considering: If Le Stud is forced to welcome women, will women-only fitness clubs like Curves now allow men to join? Didn't think so.
Hero Rosie O'Donnell, for being out and proud during her terrific run on The View.
Zero Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told Columbia University students in September, "We don't have homosexuals in Iran." If that's true, that's because he's killed them all.
Hero Toronto's Akim Ade Larcher, who organized successful Stop Murder Music boycott campaigns targeting Canadian tours this past autumn by anti-gay dancehall
stars Sizzla and Elephant Man.Zero The Georgia Straight, which pulled out of Vancouver's Pride parade after organizers complained about the alt-weekly's "Pride Incorporated" cover story. A once-radical local institution gone upmarket, corporate and profitable? Yup, sounds like The Georgia Straight to me.
Zero TV comic Rick Mercer, who disingenuously told Xtra in September, "I never hid the fact that I'm gay. I made a decision a long time ago that if anyone ever asked about my personal life - granted, I like to keep my personal life as personal as I can - I would never be comfortable with saying I wasn't gay because that's just not the facts. I mean I just couldn't do that." Except, in my Oct. 2003 Hour cover story headlined "The Straight Man," when I asked him about being gay, Mercer snapped, "I don't talk about how I vote, about my family or my personal life."
Zero Jerry Falwell, whose death this year is proof there is a God.
Zero Larry Craig.
Hero Stupid.com, for marketing its Larry "I'm not gay" Craig action doll, as well as the budding entrepreneur who put up for auction on eBay toilet paper allegedly taken from the Minneapolis airport bathroom stall where Craig practised his "wide stance."
Zeros Canadian soldiers Eric Wright and Ryan Dowie, convicted in a Dutch court of assaulting a gay man in Amsterdam. The victim claims he was attacked after the soldiers asked him if he was gay.
Hero The German government, for green-lighting construction of an $800,000 Berlin memorial to gay victims of the Holocaust. It bears repeating, SS chief Himmler once boasted the Nazis killed one million homos between 1939 and 1944.
Zero Newsman Tom Brokaw, for not even once mentioning gay rights in his book Boom! Voices of the Sixties: Personal Reflections on the 60s and Today, de-gaying an entire generation that laid the foundation for the gay civil rights movement and bequeathed the world Stonewall.
Hero The Coalition Gaie et Lesbienne du Québec, which was granted UN observer status on July 21.
Heroes The 200 marchers who braved brutal mob attacks at their July 7 Pride parade in Zagreb, the same day Pride marchers in Budapest defied hundreds of skinheads throwing rotten eggs and smoke bombs.
Heroes The 2.5 million Spaniards who attended their Pride parade in Madrid, and the three million Brazilians who attended their Pride parade in São Paulo.
Hero Republican San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders, who - with his beaming lesbian daughter, Lisa Sanders, by his side - abruptly and very publicly changed his position on gay marriage at a Sept. 19 press conference, then signed a city council resolution urging the California Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage.
Zero Power dyke Mary Cheney, who gave birth to a turkey-baster baby boy on May 23. Mary and her dad Dick Cheney could learn a lesson or two from Lisa and Jerry Sanders.
Heroes Teens coming out. A 2007 U.S. study reports the average coming-out age today is 13.
Zeros The bullies whose homophobic taunting drove 15-year-old Welsh teen Jonathan Reynolds to lie down in front of a train to die, and drove 13-year-old Ontario student Shaquille Wisdom to hang himself.
Heroes Grade 12 Nova Scotia students David Shepherd and Travis Price, who organized their hugely successful "Wear Pink Day" at Central Kings Rural High School after a grade 9 boy wearing pink was harassed by homophobic schoolyard bullies.
Heroes Gay pioneers Gino Empry, Barbara Gittings (Mother of the GLBT Civil Rights Movement), scholar Yolanda Retter Vargas, actors John Inman and Charles Nelson Reilly and the great Jane Rule all passed away in 2007. R.I.P.
Just a correction, Gino Empry passed away in the fall of 2006, not 2007 as you mention.
Furthermore, I question why you refer to him as a "Gay Pioneer"?
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John Greco
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Alan Berube a wonderful, kind, intelligent, funny and thoughtful historian of the struggles of gay working people died recently. He too is a hero.
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Diane Kilby
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