If anyone
deserves thanks for making 2007 a breakthrough year for gay
people, it would have to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Not only
did the swarthy Iranian dictator show the world that
you will be laughed at if you dare assert something as
ridiculous as there are no homosexuals in your country
-- the guffaws of the Columbia University audience that
greeted this statement still echo in my ears -- but
the incident also gave rise to the loopily effective
Saturday Night Live video "Iran So
Far Away," in which Andy Samberg serenades the
Islamic leader. Against a seductive slow-jam beat, the
cutie-pie comic talk-sings about his love affair with
Ahmadinejad, impersonated by cast mate Fred Armisen,
while Maroon 5's Adam Levine supplies plaintive
falsetto vocals on the chorus. "You crazy for
this world, Mahmoud," Samberg eventually
concludes, as the object of his affection reclines in a
sparkly red cocktail dress before him. "You can
deny the Holocaust all you want, but you can't
deny that there's something between us. I know you
say there's no gays in Iran, but you're
in New York now, baby--it's time to stop
hiding and start living." Then Samberg reaches out
and tenderly caresses his love's beard.
Touching stuff -- although maybe not in Tehran.
If the video was
not as radioactive as 2006's Samberg-Justin
Timberlake collaboration "Dick in a
Box," which everyone and their mother was
talking about, "Iran So Far Away" was arguably
more influential, taking on a man revered in much of
the Islamic world, who reputedly could send a
nuclear-tipped warhead into Israel if he wanted. Its breezy
caricature potently showed how outdated
Ahmadinejad's homophobia is and, by extension,
indicted the prejudice and hatred of antigay zealots in our
own country. The implicit message, seen by millions of
people around the world: If you speak out against gay
people, you will look like an idiot.
Certainly
that's what happened to Isaiah Washington, who kicked
off the year with his gleeful utterance of
"f****t" backstage at the Golden Globes
in front of his stunned Grey's Anatomy
cast members -- including T.R. Knight, the original object
of the epithet. As ugly as the episode was, it
achieved at least one positive result: The ascension
of this f word into the verboten. A.I. (After Isaiah),
the slur is no longer acceptable in public discourse.
Hallelujah!
Indeed, in terms
of acceptance, 2007 was the year that the gays were
finally embraced on a visible nationwide scale in
America--when society at large came to our side.
There was Ellen hosting the Oscars only weeks after
she acted as confessor to a teary-eyed Knight on her talk
show. (Too bad she would go on to tarnish her golden
aura by defying the Writers Guild of America strike
and tangling with an animal shelter.) There was
Melissa Etheridge, who in accepting her Oscar for Best Song
(for An Inconvenient Truth's "I Need to
Wake Up") thanked her "incredible wife
Tammy and our four children," scoring one for
gay families everywhere. There was Melissa again, at the
Democratic presidential forum on LGBT issues televised by
Logo -- now seen in 28 million households! There were
those damn Democratic candidates themselves, whose
professed support for all things gay only made their
lack of support for marriage equality that much
sadder -- not to mention Barack Obama's dubious
dalliance with "ex-gay" gospel singer Donnie
McClurkin. And who could forget the gay and lesbian
military heroes: brave men and women like Eric Alva,
the first soldier injured in the Iraq war, or Ciara Durkin,
the first casualty of Iraq or Afghanistan to be
posthumously identified as LGBT? Former Joint Chiefs
chairman Peter Pace may think homosexual sex is
"immoral" -- a remark that helped torpedo his
nomination for a second term -- but the righteous
service of Alva and Durkin powerfully contradicts him.
And if I can toot
our own horn for a minute, The Advocate
celebrated its 40th anniversary in high style at a Los
Angeles party that none other than Katherine Heigl, one of
Hollywood's major up-and-comers, happened to
drop by, only two nights after nabbing an Emmy for her
role on Grey's Anatomy. Her date? Mr.
Knight, her BFF, for whom she valiantly stood up all year
long.
Although Knight
himself missed out on an Emmy, the fact that he was
nominated was victory enough for all that he had been
through. Indeed, a welcome new trend seemed to
materialize before our very eyes on the small screen:
the actor whose career improves after coming out. Knight
wasn't the only beneficiary -- Neil Patrick
Harris was also up for an Emmy, for his widely praised
work as the misanthropic Barney on the CBS sitcom How I
Met Your Mother. Who'd have thought? That
old canard that audiences won't take to gay actors
playing straight roles has finally been debunked. Both
Knight and Harris play emphatically heterosexual
characters -- indeed, the bulked-up Knight has transformed
himself into a hetero-sex symbol -- and no one seems to
care. If anything, their shows are more popular than
before.
Even the
broadcast news closet seemed to crack just a bit when
Anderson Cooper, commenting on his show about baby
paraphernalia imprinted with his and CNN colleague
Erica Hill's names, joked that her husband
"clearly has nothing to be nervous
about." And one of the best surprises of the
year had to be hottie Thomas Roberts, formerly of CNN -- and
last seen on the channel in the spring, when he told
Cooper of his molestation by a priest -- keeping his
new gig as a correspondent for syndicated
entertainment show The Insider despite a
vicious attack from a gay blogger, who posted what he
claimed were nude photos of Roberts from the
newsman's purported Manhunt profile. A year ago
Roberts might've lost his job after an
"expose" like that.
And where were
our foes in 2007? For a change, nowhere. Hear that sound?
Ah, nothing--bracing, invigorating silence. With the
ultraconservative Republican base as near to ruins as
it has ever been, evangelical firebrand Jerry Falwell
dead and buried, and culture war maestro Karl Rove
departed from the White House, there was no one to take the
reins of the far-right hate machine. The
Republicans' best hope for preserving power?
Pro- choice, pro-gay rights presidential candidate
Rudy Giuliani, who was leading in national polls at
press time, or Mitt Romney, whose real convictions
might be more sympathetic to us than his current stump
speech would suggest.
That quietude
paved the way for such major legislative accomplishments as
the Matthew Shepard Act hate-crimes bill and the Employment
Non-Discrimination Act, guided through Congress by perhaps
the most gay-friendly leadership in history. Although
the latter bill unfortunately omitted protections for
transgender people, it was unprecedented to witness
two pieces of pro-gay federal legislation pass at
least one congressional chamber. And both bills are key
parts of our civil rights agenda--parts that
many observers, including the current Democratic
presidential contenders, agree are crucial building blocks
in the ongoing effort to gain federal marriage
equality.
Of course,
neither bill has been signed into law, and ENDA still needs
to pass the Senate. But that seems like a foregone
conclusion, especially if the White House flips
parties in 2009. Critics might deride the current
ENDA's failure to include gender identity or call the
bill pointless because President Bush won't
sign it. They might want to remember this: In 30
states you still can be fired if you're gay or
lesbian. That discrimination at least ends as soon as
ENDA enters the books. As if foreshadowing that day,
the Republicans grudgingly let Larry Craig--the
first gay senator?--keep his job after they
initially tried to oust him following his airport bathroom
shenanigans.
But the surest
sign that 2007 was the year for gay people was a
little-noticed event in Washington, D.C. The lack of
controversy about it says more about how far
we've come than anything else. On September 6 the
Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History
unveiled, under the title "Treasures of
American History," two vintage gay rights picket
signs from 1965 donated by pioneering activist Frank Kameny.
Alongside
mainstays of Americana like Thomas Jefferson's
writing desk and other recent acquisitions such as
boxer Joe Louis's gloves, these
placards' simple messages of first class citizenship
for homosexuals and discrimination against homosexuals
is as immoral as discrimination against negroes &
jews are at once shocking and ho-hum. As an
accompanying photo attests, the signs were once paraded by
daring social outcasts in front of the White House;
now they'll be preserved forever as symbols of
our national evolution.
In civil rights
struggles people often talk about being on the right side
of history. Well, now we're literally on that right
side, behind a glass enclosure with dozens of other
unquestioned artifacts of American goodness. When we
look back on 2007 years from now -- and more to the
point, when our ancestors look back hundreds of years from
now at this historical moment -- it will be clear that
this was the tipping point, when our vision for
ourselves finally started to slide into reach. Just
picture all the children at the Museum of American History
holding their parents' hands as they pass by
the display and look in wonder at the weathered picket
signs, the faded yellow buttons next to them expressing
gay is good. I can hear their voices already, building to a
din as the future advances. "Gay is
good," they'll say, before fixing their eyes
on Mom and Dad. "I mean, hello!"