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The Unmistakably Gay World of Russell T Davies
Sitting down to a gay-themed TV show has often meant watching with one eye closed — figuratively, at least — so as not to notice certain glaring problems. The most common annoyances are characters who bear no resemblance to any queer person, living or dead, who seem to have been created solely because a certain body type or subculture needs to be represented in order to attract viewers, and predictable, politically correct plotting, which appears to have been shaped by a desire to avoid negative feedback from “the community” rather than an active desire to tell an interesting story.
Go ahead: Try to think of a gay show that doesn’t suffer from those flaws. If you succeeded, there’s a good chance the program you have in mind was created by Welshman Russell T Davies.
Davies is responsible for the original Queer as Folk, which aired in Britain in 1999 and 2000; 2001’s Bob & Rose, a rom-com about a gay man and a straight woman who fall in love; and two intersecting series that aired in the United States on Logo in 2015: Cucumber, about the troubled relationship of Henry and Lance, a middle-aged gay couple, and Banana, which focuses on the larger LGBT community they’re part of. And that’s just his explicitly queer output: As one of Britain’s most productive and successful TV writers and show runners, Davies also counts among his achievements reviving the fabled Doctor Who franchise in 2005 and creating two spin-offs: The Sarah Jane Adventures, for children, and Torchwood, featuring omnisexual time traveler Capt. Jack Harkness, for adults.
How has Davies managed to avoid the pitfalls that typically beset gay TV shows? His work is idiosyncratic, but anyone who wants to make entertaining, surprising shows can learn from his example.
First and foremost, he’s a provocateur. Davies loves to put prickly protagonists into politically problematic situations. From Stuart in Queer as Folk to Henry in Cucumber, Davies has created a string of exasperatingly annoying characters. Stuart was selfish, irresponsible, and utterly irresistible; Henry was self-absorbed, oblivious, and totally real.
Likewise, Davies’s version of LGBT life rarely follows the right-on script. The very concept of Bob & Rose (which can be viewed in its entirety on YouTube) seems designed to launch a protest campaign, but the show is grounded in such specific, complex characterizations that it makes nonsense of complaints that its central relationship questions the true nature of sexual orientation. Bob & Rose isn’t hostile to bisexuality, but the script makes it clear that even after he falls for Rose, Bob still identifies as a gay man: “I’m gay now. I’ll die gay. I’ll have a gay headstone!” he yells in frustration at one point. As with so many of the controversial elements of Davies’s shows, the relationship is based on an incident from his own life, when one of his friends — “the gayest man you’ll ever meet in the world,” Davies told a journalist in 2000 — fell in love with a woman.
There’s a similar ripped-from-real-life background to the episode of Banana in which it’s revealed that the sad story a young gay man repeatedly tells his friends — that his parents kicked him out when they learned he was gay — is a complete fabrication.
“I met that boy a thousand million times,” Davies told me earlier this year. “Some young people have a terrible time and suffer and should be supported in all sorts of ways, but that’s not the only story.” Davies is always willing to risk knee-jerk objections to sensitive story lines, feinting down a familiar dramatic path only to take an unexpected turn.
Above: The cast of Cucumber, courtesy of Logo
Davies’s four gay shows weren’t just set in the gritty Northern English city of Manchester; they were also filmed there. For British viewers at least, that lends an air of authenticity. (The U.S. version of Queer as Folk, set in Pittsburgh, was shot in Toronto.) The setting is just the beginning, though. Davies has a rare ability to convey how alien it can feel to be queer in a mostly straight world. His characters are unmistakably gay — they lust after and sleep with men and socialize with gay friends in gay bars — but the show doesn’t pretend that the entire world is queer. In an early episode of Queer as Folk, Vince, who isn’t out at work, is set up with a female co-worker. As he walks into the straight pub where they’re supposed to meet, he’s on the phone to Stuart, describing it as though neither of them has ever set foot in such an exotic locale: “There are people talking in sentences that have no punch line!…They’ve got toilets in which no one’s ever had sex!” It’s surprisingly rare for gay shows to acknowledge the wider, non-gay world.
Many of the elements that make Davies’s shows so special are hard to replicate outside Britain. For example, British programmers keep things short and sweet, while U.S. producers are looking for shows that will last — so while the British Queer as Folk ran for just 10 episodes, Showtime made 83 episodes over five seasons. Americans also tend to avoid pop culture or other details that might date the action. The Brits have no such qualms. Davies’s dialogue is studded with references to soaps, sci-fi, and porn. And while nothing ages worse than computers, Davies’s characters are always using the latest tech. At some point in the future, Cucumber’s hookup apps and YouTube videos will seem as outdated as the early gay chat rooms on Queer as Folk now appear — but better to create a world that might seem outmoded a decade down the line than set a show in a universe that doesn’t reflect the way we live now.
Above: Craig Kelly, Charlie Hunnam, and Aidan Gillen in Queer as Folk
Davies’s shows are political, but his gay protagonists usually aren’t. He loves to give his queer characters larger-than-life mothers, many of whom are activists. The older women’s political involvement is sometimes played for laughs — they’re more committed to the struggle for LGBT rights than any of the shows’ actual homosexuals — and they’re often used to point out the slight hypocrisy of some straight allies. Bob’s mom devotes her life to painting placards and organizing demonstrations, but she still seems to care far more about Rose than she ever did about his boyfriends.
Of course, Davies can get away with his provocations because he’s a superstar writer and show runner. A track record always helps. It’s hard to imagine a U.S. broadcast network like Fox allowing someone without the industry credentials of Oscar nominee Lee Daniels to create a boundary-pushing character like Empire’s outrageous Cookie Lyon or to explore a troubled relationship like that between gay Jamal and his homophobic father, Lucious. Empire is the closest American analog to Davies’s cheeky, mischievous, often hilarious British shows. (It’s more Davies-like than Showtime’s Queer as Folk, which, despite working from his original template, became more predictable and bland the longer it ran.) If only Empire’s Jamal could spend some time in Manchester!
JUNE THOMAS writes about culture for Slate and edits Outward, the magazine’s LGBTQ section. A native of Manchester, England, she now lives in Brooklyn.
June Thomas
www.advocate.com/current-issue/2015/11/03/unmistakably-gay-world-russell-t-davies
Developing: LGBT Equal Rights Measure On The Ropes In Houston
Early voting results show Houston’s equal rights ordinance failing by a wide margin, with 62.5 percent of voters opting to repeal the law and 37.5 percent supporting the embattled ordinance.
Those results include 134,074 early voting and mail ballots but do not reflect turnout at the polls Tuesday.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Open Question: I need help formulating a sociological question related to either Social Identity, Deviance or Social Inequality?
Some topics I found interesting were Suicide, a topic related to college students, and possibly LGBT communities?
I’m just not sure how to pick one of those to create a sociological question.
HERO Trails 63 Percent to 37 After Early Voting, Appears Headed For Defeat
HERO appears to be in trouble.
Sixty-three percent of those who cast early or mail-in ballots voted against Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance, compared to 37 percent in favor, according to results posted shortly after polls closed at 7 p.m. Central. Because roughly half of voters were expected to cast ballots early or by mail, the results may be a good indicator of the final outcome. Election Day results will trickle in over the next few hours.
The early voting numbers are in line with predictions from experts, who’ve said they believe the ordinance will be defeated largely due to increased turnout in heavily Republican and African-American precincts. The 130,000 city voters who cast early ballots is more than double the number who did so in 2009, the last time the mayor’s seat was open.
Groups supporting the ordinance raised more than $3 million, swamping opponents, but many voters apparently were swayed by the debunked transgender bathroom myth. HERO opponents, who’ve labeled it “the bathroom ordinance” and coined the slogan “No men in women’s bathrooms,” flooded the airwaves with misleading, fear-mongering ads suggesting it would allow sexual predators to prey on women and children.
From The Houston Chronicle:
“I have a problem with Proposition 1,” said Frenchy White, 56, who voted Tuesday at Mount Olive Baptist Church in Houston’s Third Ward. “I don’t think men should be able to go into women’s restrooms and put on lipstick. All men are not transgender. They are just going to go and rape girls.”‘
White, who said he was impressed with anti-ordinance advertising that emphasized the purported risk of sexual predators entering women’s restrooms, said he routinely stands guard, arms crossed, as his four grandchildren – three girls and a boy – use such facilities.
“Women,” White said, “are just going to have to get them a knife, some Mace or a pistol.”
The ordinance would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and 13 other characteristics in employment, housing, public accommodations and city contracting. Houston is the largest city in the US, and the only major city in Texas, that lacks an LGBT-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance.
After the City Council approved the ordinance in May 2014, Mayor Annise Parker and other officials rejected a petition seeking to repeal it, saying it didn’t have enough valid signatures. Anti-LGBT activists filed a lawsuit, but a district judge upheld the city’s decision, saying the petition contained widespread forgery. However, HERO opponents eventually obtained a decision from the elected, all-Republican Texas Supreme Court, ordering the city to repeal the ordinance or place it on the ballot.
The post HERO Trails 63 Percent to 37 After Early Voting, Appears Headed For Defeat appeared first on Towleroad.
John Wright
HERO Trails 63 Percent to 37 After Early Voting, Appears Headed For Defeat
Evangelist Franklin Graham Loves Putin's Antigay Policies
Conservative Christian evangelist Franklin Graham, on a trip to Russia last week, praised President Vladimir Putin and the nation’s so-called gay propaganda law for “protecting Russian young people” and criticized LGBT-accepting U.S. churches as well as President Obama.
“I very much appreciate that President Putin is protecting Russian young people against homosexual propaganda,” Graham told Russian newspaper Moskoviskij Komsomolets, according to a translation by Right Wing Watch. “If only to give them the opportunity to grow up and make a decision for themselves. Again, homosexuals cannot have children, they can take other people’s children.”
Russia’s “propaganda” law, enacted in 2013, prohibits “promotion of nontraditional sexual relations” — basically, anything that portrays LGBT people in a positive light or endorses LGBT equality — in venues accessible to minors.
Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which was founded by his father, also told the paper that while he considers Obama “a very nice person,” he thinks the U.S. president is “taking a stand against God.”
“He supports and promotes policies that contradict the teachings of God,” Graham said. “As a Christian I believe that abortion is murder, he supports it. Homosexuality and same-sex marriage — those are sins against God, and the president is promoting them. I’m not against homosexuals as people. But God commanded that marriage should be between a man and a woman.”
During his Russian sojourn, Graham met with Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, and decried trends in the U.S. “Many churches in America have started to support homosexuality,” Graham told Kirill, according to another Russian paper translated by Right Wing Watch. “This is terrible, it’s a sin, and it’s against God.”
Graham also reportedly told the patriarch that Obama “promotes atheism” and “does not have a Christian worldview.” Putin, he said, “is protecting traditional Christianity.”
Now Graham will seek to influence the U.S. political process with a 50-state tour beginning in January. He will not endorse any candidate but will “ask Christians to pray for the country, vote for people who hold biblical values and run for public office at every level,” according to a press release on his group’s website. His first stop will be in Des Moines January 5, about a month before Iowa holds its presidential caucus. He has other January and February stops scheduled in early primary states such as New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Trudy Ring
www.advocate.com/world/2015/11/03/evangelist-franklin-graham-loves-putins-antigay-policies
What You Need To Know About Chemsex
Mainstream awareness about “chemsex,” a little-discussed public health issue in the gay community, is on the rise. Programs like BBC Radio 4’s July segment on chemsex in London and Vice Media’s upcoming documentary on chemsex in England and Ireland shed light on what some say is a growing phenomenon of men using hardcore club drugs to fuel hours- or days-long sex sessions.
Chemsex generally involves taking substance like GHB, crystal meth or mephedrone (known as meow meow) to enhance or prolong sexual activity, primarily among a subset of city-dwelling gay men. Crystal meth and meow meow stimulate sexual arousal and euphoria, while GHB removes inhibitions.
Researchers suspect that the practice could be driving London’s rising HIV rates among young men, but the practice is so covert and the population of participants so small that not enough research exists about the topic.
In response, a small group of sex health and drug abuse specialists wrote an op-ed in the current edition of the prestigious British medical journal BMJ, calling for authorities to recognize that the consequences of chemsex should be a public health priority. In the face of budget cuts for specialized sex and drug health services, they write, centers that combine both would be cost-effective and provide a rich source of data to understand this little-researched practice.
The op-ed’s lead author Hannah McCall, a senior nurse at the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, specializes in sexual and reproductive health serving the large LGBT community that comes to live in London. Citing a landmark 2014 chemsex study, she writes that men who engage in the activity say they use the drugs to “manage negative feelings, such as a lack of confidence and self-esteem, internalized homophobia, and stigma about their HIV status.”
The 2014 study included 15,000 gay and bisexual men who live in England, 1,142 of whom lived in South London — an area with a large LGBT population and nightlife scene. In it, anonymous sources describe what draws them to chemsex. “I have never really been able to have sober gay sex,” one man wrote.
“If you get rejected and you are on mephedrone it doesn’t really matter,” another man said. “The club is full of other people. It has kind of, like, separated you from the reality of that sting.”
Chemsex is not a pervasive problem in the general population, and is only practiced by a very small segment of men in the gay community. About 5.9 percent of gay men in South London had ever used or injected non-prescription drugs in general, and only 3.5 percent had done it in the past year.
However, among the gay men in South London who did use drugs, use rates of substances linked to chemsex — namely, meow meow, crystal meth and GHB — were two to eight times higher compared to men living in wider London and England.
Despite the small pool of people who engage in chemsex, the health repercussions can be devastating, and can contribute to public health issues including drug addiction and increasing risk of HIV and hepatitis C virus. On an individual level, McCall writes, men who have chemsex say they lose track of essential functioning, not sleeping or drinking water for up to three days straight. What’s more, research suggests unprotected sex “is the norm” during chemsex, with men taking an average of five partners during a single session.
One researcher called chemsex a “perfect storm” for both HIV and hepatitis C transmissions, although there are signs that not all sessions are unprotected. Some participants even “sero-sort,” or choose partners according to their HIV status, but research shows sero-sorting is not a reliable way to prevent transmission.
Notably, it’s concerns about drug use — not sexual practice — that keep people who engage in chemsex from seeking help, McCall wrote. For instance, a July 2015 study of 30 gay men who have had chemsex found they were looking for advice on the proper dosing of the drug, ways to avoid overdoses and and how to negotiate sexual consent. However, the majority of drug help services are centered more around opioid abuse (prescription drugs and heroin) than they are the party drugs linked with chemsex.
Of course, chemsex is not a new phenomenon. Ron Stall, co-director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for LGBT Health Research, has been studying the practice for nearly 30 years. Stall says chemsex is a documented part of urban gay culture around the world, but emphasized how rare it is overall.
“The vast majority of gay men do not combine methamphetamine-like drugs with sex and many men actively discourage the practice,” Stall told The Huffington Post.
Stall points out that combining drug use and sex is extremely dangerous for the general population, not just those who engage in chemsex. For example, drug use and HIV go hand in hand, not only because of the blood-exposure risks that come from sharing needles but also because people who use drugs are more likely to have riskier sex or transactional sex — acts that could increase someone’s risk of contracting HIV. On its own, occasional drug use can metastasize into full-blown drug abuse that destroys a person’s ability to work, relate to others and stay out of jail.
Stall’s research on the practice has focused on how emotional and physical violence from widespread homophobia in society affects gay children and teens, making them more prone to engage in risky behaviors like chemsex.
“The life-long effects of homophobic attacks, starting in childhood with many men, predict a set of psychosocial health problems that in turn predict vulnerability to drug abuse,” Stall said, and this abuse could turn into internalized homophobia as the gay teen grows up. But men who both come to terms with the abuse they suffered, as well as recognize its effects on the way they view themselves, may defeat the cycle of shame and despair.
“Men who do better in terms of resolving internalized homophobia are less likely to suffer from an interlocking cluster of psychosocial health problems, and so [are] less likely to be vulnerable to drug abuse,” he said.
To combat the risks of drugged-up sex, McCall suggests that routing funding to clinics that specialize in chemsex as well as treatment for “party drug” addictions could help men receive more targeted support for medical care. Because healthcare funding for sexual health and for drug use are two separate (and ever-diminishing) streams in the United Kingdom, she says creating centers that combine both services in one could go a long way to be a cost-effective solution to care.
In the U.S., Stall proposes a wider research and prevention scope that focuses not just on chemsex, but substance use disorder in general.
“While the risks for HIV and [hepatitis C virus] infection are real and alarming among gay men, calls to deal with these problems would be stronger if they also called for research to develop gay-specific substance abuse programs and community-based programs to prevent substance abuse before it spirals into addiction,” he said.
It’s unclear how widespread chemsex is around the globe, because most studies that examine the link between drug use and sex are about HIV risk, not sex party behavior. Those studies that do focus on chemsex are focused on the U.K., the U.S. and Australia, noted the authors of the 2014 study. It’s this lack of data that limits how doctors can care for men seeking help, McCall argues. What is clear, she concludes, is that chemsex-related disease should be a priority for public health authorities.
Also on HuffPost:
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Open Question: Do gay people realize, that pride parades make them look bad?
Ever since I attended the Gay Pride Parade in New York, I’ve understood why there are still people who are against gays.
I can picture a nice, decent family man driving into the city one day, probably doesn’t know there’s a Gay Pride Parade going on that day, and then seeing the parade. He probably doesn’t have an opinion on gay rights, probably never knew many gays in his life, and never gave it much thought. And upon seeing the way people act at their parades, he must think “My God! If my state supports gay marriage, all these people are going to be living right nextdoor to me! I have to keep my children safe from this!” And in a matter of two seconds, he goes from not having an opinion to being against gays.
I’ve always been aware of this, but I never knew gays were aware of it too, until I read Thomas’ question (again, can’t post the link because Y!A censoring is going bonkers), where he acknowledged it. So I’m just wondering if most gays are aware of this or not?
I would ask this in the LGBT section, but unfortunately, the people there are just like the ones who attend gay pride parades. I’ve gotten VNs for asking questions which try to understand the plight gays go through before.
Empire’s Jussie Smollett Is On Top Where You Like Him
Recently Black Dynasty, AKA Empire, gave us another Jamal Lyon set piece, wherein an artist, whom Jamal describes as the “next Andy Warhol,” photographs him at the piano.
Jamal: “What do you want me to play?”
Artist: “I want you to play whatever you’re feeling. I want to be inside you.”
OMG, we love this show.
Maybe Jamal flips like your dream boyfriend, so there’s some chance you’ll get in like the next Andy Warhol.
Artist: “God, you’re gorgeous.”
Or you’ll be the one with legs in the air.
Jamal is equal parts hot and adorable Jussie Smollett, also gay, a caramel-colored Jewish/African/Native American/Northern Euro mashup from a big acting family that also gave the world Denise, the Olsen twins’ best friend on Full House.
Jussie sings as well as acts, so was a natural for the show’s singing/songwriting Jamal, one of three brothers hoping to take over dad Lucious Lyon’s hip-hop empire.
Cue Shakespearean power struggles.
Daniels came up with a big coming out party for Jamal in Season 1, a gigantic club number that left jaws gaping on and off the show; it was maybe the splashiest gay declaration ever on television.
But since then, Jamal’s orientation has been less declarative and more fact-of-life.
For instance, he makes out a lot with cha-cha boyfriend Rafael de La Fuente. Like real, deep, hard, man-on-man kissing. This is on broadcast television. This is on Fox.
Thanks, Rupert!
Here are some more favorite Jussie Smollett looks from Empire and around the Internets, because we can’t get enough of him and he’s definitely one to watch, probably looking up. Ask the next Andy Warhol.
1. How you first met Jussie, with a Fox publicity shot. Adorable, and ruthless.
2. He wants his Empire.
3. Instagramming with Empire mom and co-star Taraji P. Henson, OK?
4. And Gabourey Sidibe.
5. Jamal really is the hottest brother.
6. Jussie starred in 2012’s gay indy The Skinny.
7. In bed with Empire boyfriend Michael. Their romance es en fuego.
8. Young and skinny. Look at that waist!
9. Jussie likes his social media, and looks good square.
10. Cute fan art.
11. Jussie is also an excellent model when he wants to be. For Essence…
12. InStyle…
13. GQ…
15. And CR Fashion Book.
16. You know Denzel’s looking at him like, damn, I remember when I was 32, ummhmmm.
Until next week, Jussie.
greg gillbergh
News: Chelsea Manning, Dancing, Jon Stewart, The Game, ‘Chemsex’
> Chelsea Manning writes surveillance reform bill from behind bars: “The sweeping legislation would abolish the shadowy court used to oversee American intelligence operations and release much of its work to the public. Writing the draft bill was ‘the most difficult undertaking’ of Manning’s since she was sent to prison in 2013, she wrote.”
> The crew on American Horror Story: Hotel can’t tell the difference between all the hot brunette men on the show.
> This Calculus teacher slayed as Drake from “Hotline Bling.”
> Justin Bieber continues his childish antics.
> Jon Stewart signs 4 year deal with HBO to create short form content.
> 20 year-old man pleads guilty to “criminal sexual conduct” resulting from an encounter with a 15 year-old he met on Grindr.
> Dancing with your friends is good for your health: “Not surprisingly, those who did full-bodied exertive dancing had higher pain thresholds compared to those who were seated in the low-exertion groups. But curiously we also found that synchronization led to higher pain thresholds, even if the synchronized movements were not exertive. So long as people saw that others were doing the same movement at the same time, their pain thresholds went up. Likewise, synchronized activity encouraged bonding more than unsynchronized dancing, and more energetic activity had a similar effect – it also made the groups feel closer.”
> Amazon opened its first physical book store today.
> Was T. Rex a cannibal? “A 66-million-year-old fossilized tyrannosaur bone unearthed in Wyoming’s Lance Formation in June is providing new evidence that T. rexes were sometimes cannibalistic. A recent analysis of the bone revealed tooth marks in the pattern of a typical T. rex’s chompers, according to Loma Linda University paleontologist Matthew McLain, who presented the findings at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Baltimore on Sunday.”
> Paul Ryan promises a “very specific agenda” of Republican ideas in the coming months.
> Alabama says $200K bill for fighting gay marriage is excessive.
> Sneak peek at NBC’s The Wiz Live! starring Elijah Kelley, Ne-Yo, David Alan Grier, Mary J. Blige, Common, and Queen Latifah.
> Ireland moves to decriminalize drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, and heroin: “It would remain a crime to profit – from either the sale or distribution of illegal drugs – but drug takers would no longer be criminalised for their addictions.”
> Jon Hamm and Amy Poehler once hosted an Emmys loser party.
> The Game is showing off his package on Instagram again.
> Twitter changes “favorites” to “likes.”
> Hillary Clinton wants to raise the minimum wage to $12 / hour: “Let’s not just do it for the sake of having a higher number out there. But let’s get behind a proposal that actually has a chance of succeeding.”
> Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig has ended his presidential campaign after failing to get a spot in Democratic party’s primary debates.
> Public healthy officials in London issue warning over rise of “chemsex”, predominantly among city’s gay population:
The post News: Chelsea Manning, Dancing, Jon Stewart, The Game, ‘Chemsex’ appeared first on Towleroad.
Sean Mandell
News: Chelsea Manning, Dancing, Jon Stewart, The Game, ‘Chemsex’
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