Allison Janney, Neil Patrick Harris, John C. Reilly, Maya Rudolph, Kathy Najimy and many more actors you know star in this send-up of religious objections to same-sex marriage. Did we mention Jack Black is Jesus?

“After being so angry and confused about this horrible and unconstitutional public shaming, it was amazing to go out there and do what we do best in protest: sing and dance,” said Adam Shankman, who staged and produced the video. The music and lyrics were written by Marc Shaiman, who won a Tony Award for “Hairspray” and who also wrote the score for “Southpark,” among other films.

The video ends with a message to visit Join the Impact for more information. Join the Impact coordinated the Nov. 15 National Day of Protest to repeal Proposition 8 and is now working toward becoming a clearinghouse for grassroots events related to gay rights.

Plus: From Pam’s House Blend, GLAAD/Harris post-election survey: Americans favor adoption and partner rights for same-sex couples

cross-posted at Our Bodies, Our Blog

I am one of those who doesn’t think that the award-winning film “American Beauty,” written by Alan Ball, is that good of a movie. I found it a little too obvious and pedantic in its attempt to unearth the not-so-quiet desperation in late 1990s suburban America. It didn’t move me.

Then came Alan Ball’s next project — “Six Feet Under” — and, putting aside a few lulls in the middle of its run of five seasons, I consider it one of the highlights of 21st-century American culture. Following in the trailblazing path of “The Sopranos,” it used the long-form nature of a television series to develop the subtleties and complexities of its characters with a literary patience and depth.

Alan Ball’s latest project premieres tonight, and from most accounts, “True Blood,” the fantastical story of vampires fighting for rights and recognition in the modern world (based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries of Charlaine Harris), falls somewhere in between the glibness and the richness of his two previous major works.

But even a blatant attempt at political allegory is refreshing, since it signals a thematic ambition that has been missing of late — with a few exceptions — on the small screen.

I’ve written plenty about the power of allegory, from Narnia to “Battlestar Galactica,” from “The Wire” to “Mad Men.” And, at least according to Alessandra Stanley of The New York Times, “True Blood” should be giving us plenty of “pop politics” to talk about:

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We’ve posted a new article in the PopPolitics magazine: “Fall Out Boy’s Biggest Faggot Fan” by Sam J. Miller, who has previously written about the political and economic subtext of haunted house films.

In his latest piece, Miller writes:

Fall Out Boy just wants to be your boy. Everybody’s boy. While most of the band’s career has focused on infiltrating the bedrooms of every young woman in the world, their new album, “Infinity on High,” makes a bid for broadening their boyfriend base into an entirely new realm: the gay market.

Bassist/songwriter/propaganda mastermind Pete Wentz gives interviews to The Advocate, makes out with boys, and picks fights with homophobic moms at concerts. There’s an overall absence of personal pronouns on the new record — a big shift from their bloody-brilliant last album, “From Under the Cork Tree” — and I’m sure that this savvy business boy left things intentionally gender-neutral so that gay guys can come on board.

But as Miller’s discusses, it’s a calculated, commercial come-on. “Who are these boys,” he asks, “and what do they want from us?”

Read the full article here.

Finally, some context. Over the weekend I read the first media account explaining why Sen. Larry Craig’s behavior in a Minneapolis airport restroom constituted a crime.

While everyone else seemed to be jumping with joy (or shaking their head in moralizing sadness) over Craig’s desperate, closeted life and his (and others) outrageous, public hypocrisy — all I kept wondering was why the prosecution of public sex acts always seem to be focused on gay men.

It felt obvious that sting operations like the one that caught Craig were thinly-veiled operations of the morality police — even though, in this case, it was conducted by real cops.

Does law enforcement cast such an elaborate net to catch heterosexual couples getting it on in public places? Clearly not, as many walks through my local parks would attest.

Yes, I know about efforts to combat prostitution — but what was happening with Craig in the restroom was presumably between consenting adults, with no payment involved. I’m not condoning public sex here — I’m only pointing out that the only sex that seems to irk the authorities is gay sex.

This is homophobia in action, with the full force of the state behind it.

So thank you, University of California-Santa Barbara professor Aaron Belkin, for providing a history lesson.

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Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times got around last week to reviewing the new offering from the Logo network, “The Happiest Gay Couple in the World.” And she think it’s pretty lame, finding most of its humor in recycling stereotypes of gays and lesbians — and ultimately, for all its explicitness, being fairly conservative:

It says something that the grossest joke on ‘Rick & Steve’ thus far hasn’t been about illicit sex but about procreation … The difference-versus-equality debates that factionalized nearly every social movement of the 20th century seem well over in the gay and lesbian world. ‘Rick & Steve’ is just more proof of how forcefully one side has won.

I previewed the show myself a few weeks back — basing my observations only on the first episode — and I felt it was fairly radical. I can see where Bellafante is coming from but I think she is denying the power of normalcy.

Sure, within the gay community, the “equality” faction won. Rosie O’Donnell and others are out to prove that gays and lesbians and their families are no threats to the American mainstream (in fact, they are being posited as catalysts of it).

But within American society as a whole, “equality” is still a nebulous concept — just watch the Democratic candidates dance around the idea of gay marriage. Even if few heterosexuals tune into shows on the Logo networks, the message is still significant. Gays and lesbians are not just Rick and Steve or Dana and Kristen. They are your neighbors, your co-workers, your friends, etc.

If that message gets across, that would be make me, well, one of the happiest cultural critics in the world.

I appreciate Michelle Tsai, the “Explainer” last week at Slate, attempting to explain how and why the late former televangelist Tammy Faye Messner became an unlikely gay icon. Tsai attributes it to Tammy Faye’s “perseverance” and her “unique style.” It also helped that she talked about AIDS before it was popular for conservatives to do so and that she ultimately befriended the gay community.

But, to me, that sells the gay community a little short. Randy Shulman, an editor of a gay newsweekly in Washington, D.C., told Neda Ulaby of NPR a few years back that Messner falls into “a tradition of divas in distress who aggressively market themselves to gay men.”

While I wouldn’t be that cynical — and testimonies abound to the genuineness of Messner’s compassion and connection to the gay community later in her life — I do think that her appeal is a little more complicated … and problematic.

The commenters on the article, in fact, do a great job of pointing out the reductive nature of Tsai’s piece. Many of them are offended by the very concept of a “gay icon” — asserting that any assertion of a unified “gay culture” with identical tastes is based more on stereotypes than reality.

But ecoX84 has the most enlightening point:

Women like Tammy Faye and Liza Minnelli become “gay icons” because their larger-than-life femininity draws attention to gender as a performance. Their representation of self is so over the top that it begs imitation from drag queens, and when a drag queen performs Tammy Faye, femininity is exposed as a construction that can be performed by anyone.

In that sense, Tammy Faye is adored less for her own personality and beliefs and more for her initially unwitting intervention into a world of rigid gender expectations.

That’s not to say that some members of the gay community didn’t make a personal connection with her — although many others probably were never able to get over her connections with the evangelical movement that has, quite literally, demonized them.

Looking at the broader cultural context of her appeal, however, it’s important to make the distinction between the performance and the person.

AN OPEN LETTER TO BOY SHAKIRA, “AMERICA’S GOT TALENT” PERFORMER:

Dear Boy Shakira,

Why? Why am I so fascinated by you?

Well… I know why. Because you’re a conundrum. I mean, what the hell? You are a sincere drag queen. Sincere! Drag queens are supposed to be campy and acidic, commenting on the idiot world with every flick of their world-weary eyelashes. Or else they’re supposed to be RuPaul, making happy dance music and giving a performance of feminine attitude that comments on how we construct our notions of women.

But you, Boy Shakira, are none of those things. Maybe it’s the way “AGT” is editing you, but you don’t seem calculated. You seem like a guy who just loves to get in a halter top and lip synch. In tonight’s post-performance talk with Jerry Springer, you said, “It’s not about the wig or the costume. It’s about entertainment. We’re entertainers.”

In other words, Boy Shakira, you have decided–with no apparent irony–that the best way you can entertain these folks is to dress up like Shakira and dance.

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As “I Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” premiered this past weekend, critics panned it — arguing almost universally that it cynically exploited homophobia while superficially emphasizing a message of tolerance. Despite its dream-team pairing of comedic powerhouses Adam Sandler and Kevin James, that mixed message apparently wasn’t very funny at all.

So, amidst this critical deluge, who was there to defend the film? Well, gay activists, of course. “Chuck and Larry” received a seal of approval from GLAAD — the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation — and it got a positive review for its ideology, if not its comedy, by Alonso Duralde at After Elton.

Huh?

Just call it another strange chapter in Hollywood’s hypocritical history of representing gay life.

Stephen Garrett of Time Out Chicago provides a concise synopsis of what bothers most critics — and admittedly, many other gay activists — about the film:

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When HBO’s “Entourage” made a transgender character the punchline on last week’s episode, I cringed.

Now, to be fair, “Entourage” could be described as a equal-opportunity mocker, as it leaves few characters unscathed. Even the privileged lifestyle of the white heterosexual male protagonists in the story comes across at best, as silly and frivolous, and at worst, as woefully out of touch with reality. Christine has discussed its refreshing self-awareness as well as its shortcomings before.

But when the show is clearly not going to present us with a fully developed transgendered character — let alone a diversity of representations — there’s really little excuse for giving this character such a dismissive role.

The Cliks

Fortunately, if you’re paying attention, transgender lives are becoming visible and vibrant parts of popular culture. Our own Mark Blankenship has discussed the work of performance artist Scott Turner Schofield, who in his one-person show rails again a “system that says we can’t be all of ourselves.”

And both Rebecca Louie of AP and Shauna Swartz of AfterEllen have excellent profiles of Lucas Silveira, the frontman for the rock band The Cliks.

Silveira’s transition to a male identity forced the band to abandon their all-girl identity. But, in the spirit of their rollicking rock and roll sound, it hasn’t lessened the band’s power: “When you give off that kind of energy, and you’re open to the world in that way, the world also opens itself up to you,” guitarist Nina Martinez. “And fans become more open to being attracted to everything that queer is about.”

While performance art and music have long been spaces of openness, the sports world has not.

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So I’ve just published my first story in Time Out New York. It’s a feature about transgender performance artist Scott Turner Schofield and his refusal to stop calling himself trans, even though he now passes for a biological man.

A 700 word feature doesn’t give me room to dig into the issue with all the depth I’d like, of course, but I think it offers a nice jumping-off point for a conversation about labeling and identity within the trans community.

Hope you enjoy!

“The Happiest Gay Couple in the World” premiered this week on the Logo network, and it’s full of edgy, animated fun. Viewers of gay-themed television — who are used to the unrelenting earnestness of “The L Word” or the sugary humor of “Will & Grace” — should prepare themselves for something completely different. Rick and Steve, the couple in question, make the kids of “South Park” look like, well, kids.

For two contrasting but complementary takes on the show, check out the reviews at AfterEllen.com and its spin-off, AfterElton.com. Although both sites were bought out by Logo last year — and the generally positive reviews are, as a result, self-promotional — both sites have retained their original editors, and they haven’t shown any sign of abandoning their mission of providing sharp, nuanced analysis of lesbian, gay, bi and trans representations in the media.

And Karman Kregloe’s take on AfterEllen.com is evidence of their willingness to tell it like it is.

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Here’s a little addendum to Mark’s spot-on analysis of the construction of masculinity in the latest “Die Hard” film:

One of the most disturbing parts of the film is the portrayal of villain’s sidekick — an unnamed Asian woman played by the very talented Maggie Q. In many ways, she is the prototypical modern action movie femme fatale — with all the sexist baggage that it implies. Despite her obvious intelligence, leadership skills, and martial arts prowess, her sexual allure is the camera’s — and the narrative’s — primary concern.

And, of course, she’s evil and will eventually die at the hands our hero — because any capable woman must in a story which is, as Mark points out so well, “a template for how the most conservative (and often reductive American ideas) about gender and power can remain firmly in place.”

While this portrayal is regrettable, though, it is not very surprising. What drops the jaws of many viewers is the virulent racist edge to it all.

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Belly Dancers, Billionaires and Bombers: William Booth of the Washington Post simultaneously reviews, interrogates and praises the new documentary “Reel Bad Arabs” — which “makes the case that Hollywood is obsessed with ‘the three Bs’ — belly dancers, billionaire sheiks and bombers — in a largely unchallenged vilification of Middle Easterners here and abroad.” The documentary centers around the work of Jack Shaheen, a retired Southern Illinois professor who painstakingly has cataloged decades of representations of Arabs on film. Ultimately, Booth explains, Shaheen is simply calling for balance — and a recognition of humanity: “Hollywood still shows black pimps and Latino gangbangers, but pop culture has also made some room for Will Smith and ‘Ugly Betty.’ ‘I’ve seen the Arab hijacker, but where is the Arab father?’ Shaheen says. What we need, he says, seriously, is a sitcom called ‘Everybody Loves Abdullah.’”

A Comical Cultural Divide: “Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean” is the very enticing title of an upcoming book-length analysis of the comics genre by Douglas Wolk. Serious comics criticism is, of course, much-needed and long overdue. Interestingly, though, the excerpt from the book on Salon is a pretty take-no-prisoners attack on a comics culture that is unnecessarily divisive: “The medium’s new enemies are internal: the much less casual snobbery of the commercial mainstream and the art-comics world toward each other, and cartoonists’ nostalgic yearning for the badness of the bad old days. Reading only auteurist art comics is like being a filmgoer who watches only auteurist art cinema, but more than a few art-comics enthusiasts wouldn’t dream of picking up a mainstream comic book, even as entertainment.”

YouWho?: Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel has a noteworthy response to all the YouTube political madness of late:

For a candidate little known outside of Alaska, for which he served two terms as a U.S. senator, Internet buzz about his weird videos beats no buzz. But has it really come to this? Presidential candidates making spoofy-goofy home movies to win votes?

To be fair, candidates are as much victims as benefactors of the YouTube age, trapped between two dimensions of reality that are fundamentally in conflict. One reality pertains to Americans who have neither the time nor the urge to “get” the latest hip thing. The other concerns the very real phenomenon of a parallel universe where younger, more technologically attuned Americans preside.

Candidates can’t afford to ignore either, but ultimately they’re forced to present two different faces to two different audiences — the plugged and the unplugged, the hip and the un-hip.

The question is: Which is the true face? Which persona will lead the nation? Come Election Day, it may not be so cool to be so cool.

That last question, of course, is a timeless political question — and one that requires a critical thinking electorate to answer.

YouInsurgency: While we might want to rachet down the “Internet buzz” on the presidential campaign trail, the mainstream media would like us to be very scared of how terrorists are manipulating the online world: “Al Qaeda and other terrorist factions are have all the media niches covered. The battle for hearts and minds has gone online and multimedia — and the more the rest of us know this, the better,” reports CBS. Apparently, the terrorists don’t actually see themselves as we do — in grainy, distorted streaming video. What a surprise.

It Wasn’t a WMD, After All: This one’s is a little dated — but we’d still like to give Mark Simpson the final word on “The Gay Bomb” (news of which we previously unearthed here): “The Gay Bomb is here already and it’s been thoroughly tested — on civilians. It was developed not by the U.S.A.F. but by the laboratories of American consumer and pop culture, advertising, and Hollywood. If you want to awaken the enemy to the attractiveness of the male body, try dropping back issues of Men’s Health or GQ on them. Or Abercrombie & Fitch posters. Or Justin Timberlake videos. Or DVDs of 300.”

Sexploitation: 70 percent of the viewers for “Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Model” on CW are female. The percentages are pretty much the same for reality shows of the same ilk like “The Ultimate Cowboy Ugly Search” and “Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders: Making the Team” on CMT. Is this surprising? According to Erin White of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, it should be, considering that most of these shows “feature scantily-clad females in what many would say are situations that degrade women and turn back the clock on generations of feminist work.” Even the CMT executives she interviewed thought the viewers of their shows, which clearly employ a “male gaze,” would at least be “pretty evenly split.”

To me, however, any surprise at those percentages only reflects a naivete about the way in which corporate capitalism constructs desires and needs. The real question is how many of the female viewers, despite their dismissive statements that the shows are just “guilty pleasures,” are looking at the women — and themselves — through male eyes.

I Think This Might Be Overdone: Not that we need another article about how men — can you believe it?!? — actually like to cook. But Pervaiz Shallwan of the AP reveals a series of noteworthy ways in which the marketing of cooking to men has significantly changed. The Food Network reports that although they from the beginning aimed their programming at women, “men quickly tuned in and now account for half of all viewers.” Men’s Health magazine reports that while the recipe section used to be the least read (and they sometimes actually left it out), now it’s the most popular section — and they now devote over a quarter of the magazine to food and nutrition. The editors and publishers of Food and Wine and Cooks Illustrated, as well as Rachael Ray, have all also recognized a growing male audience. Even Maxim — do they have no shame? — is launching a line of salsa and barbecue sauces.

Of course, all of this says more about the entrenched biases of the cooking and marketing industries than the men themselves — who never seem to have a problem dominating the kitchen in places they actually pay good money (only 20 percent of professional chefs are women, Shallwan also notes).

That Darn Media: From the latest poll numbers, Hillary seems to be successfuly walking the line between the center right and the left (she’s leading among both self-described “liberal democrats” as well as “moderate/conservative democrats”). She also probably considers it a victory to have conservatives like Brent Bozell giving her favorable coverage for her “courage” in taking on Hollywood.

Bozell actually makes several valid points about both Clinton’s strategic, and somewhat hypocritical, stance against an immoral media culture. Unfortunately, what he (and many others whom Clinton is trying to appease) see as “media literacy” is actually just a cover for the promotion of a very specific moral agenda. What would really be courageous would be for a candidate to start talking about media literacy from an educational rather than a moral standpoint — as a tool of empowerment rather than censorship.

That Darn Spanish Media: Arnold Schwarzenegger believes that Latinos — if they really want to succeed in America — must tune out Spanish-language newspapers, TV and radio. What’s interesting here — besides Schwarzenegger’s myopic sense that what worked from him coming from Austria will work for everyone — is that the criticism of his remarks seems somewhat tepid. It appears that English-only advocates have staked out a place of legitimacy on the cultural battlefield.

Unfortunately, in the heat of the battle, the complicated relationship between language, power and cultural heritage gets lost — and the simplicity of the “all or nothing” strategy too often wins the day.

Just Let Jack Bauer Try to Defuse This One: The Pentagon once seriously contemplated an Air Force proposal in 1994 that called for a “gay bomb” — “a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.” We don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Thanks to the Berkeley’s Sunshine Project for uncovering this gem (see their scanned copy [pdf] of the original proposal). And thanks to Raw Story for original link.

The Pink Pistols are a national organization that encourages gay, lesbian and transgender people to “arm themselves” to prevent hate crimes. Although its arguments for owning a gun are no more persuasive to me than the NRA (I take my gun advice from The Gun Guys), what is fascinating on a cultural level is the discomfort the group causes among conservatives.

Sarah Klein, writing for Alternate 101 (via Alternet), looks at the group from both a local (focusing on the outspoken coordinator of a San Jose chapter) and a national perspective.

In Klein’s interviews with the NRA and other national organizations, the conservatives’ internal conflict — their cultural dissonance, one might say — is quite clear:

Michael S. Brown, a member of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, has written about the controversy for the politically conservative website Enter Stage Right.

“The leaders of the NRA are well aware of the growth of the Pink Pistols and it presents them with something of a dilemma,” Brown writes. “On one hand, they are happy to see a traditionally anti-gun segment of the population swinging over to the pro-gun side. However, if they embrace this new group, they risk alienating some of their current members who actually do fit the right-wing stereotype.” [...]

The NRA has long resisted including other issues in its agenda.

“We are a single-issue group,” says NRA spokesperson Ashley Varner. “We support every law-abiding American’s Second Amendment rights but we don’t take any position on other specific groups.”

Is that progress? Scott Tucker, a spokesman for the Log Cabin Republicans, puts the conservative dilemma in perspective:

“Really, the Pink Pistols are just proof that gays and lesbians aren’t always in political lockstep …. There are gay Americans on both sides of every issue, including the Second Amendment.” Although Tucker says his organization doesn’t have an official stance on gun control, he admires the Pistols for tackling a controversial subject unapologetically.

“Any time you have gay and lesbian folks that stand up and say something that isn’t popular within their community, that can shatter stereotypes,” he said.

Very true. But that also means, of course, that gay Americans can be just as dead wrong as the next guy.