'50 Shas of Grey' gay flap |

Contents:

• FIFTY SHAS OF GAY
• FIFTY SHAS OF HOMOPHOBIA: WHO CAR IF THE ACTOR WHO PLAYS CHRISTIAN GREY IS GAY?
• '50 SHAS OF GREY' GAY FLAP
• FIFTY SHAS’ MARCIA GAY HARN OPENS UP ‘SEXUAL UNLEASHG’ IN FANDOM AND WHY BEG IN THE THICK OF IT WAS ‘FASCATG’

FIFTY SHAS OF GAY

3, 184, 500 views | iO Tillett Wright | TEDxWomen 2012 • December 2012iO Tillett Wright has photographed 2, 000 people who nsir themselv somewhere on the LGBTQ spectm -- and asked many of them: Can you assign a percentage to how gay or straight you are? Most people, turns out, nsir themselv to exist the gray areas of sexualy, not 100% gay or straight.

IO Tillett Wright has photographed 2, 000 people who nsir themselv somewhere on the LGBTQ spectm -- and asked many of them: Can you assign a percentage to how gay or straight you are? If anythg, the books embrace a light, bro-y homophobia, which hugs between dus and d jok about gay sex are ed to diffe tensn. In October, David Ghee, an evangelil Christian and profsor of ethics at Mercer Universy, me out support of homosexualy, sayg he was “tly sorry that took me so long to e to full solidary wh the Church’s own most opprsed group.

” But his statement that “gay people should be ved to that” was a morately big al; Ghee is a visible figure wh the evangelil also acknowledged the populary of the Fifty Shas books wh his muny. Maybe I'm an ialist, but when I first heard that Bret Easton Ellis had taken to Twter to personally embargo openly gay actor Matt Bomer om beg st as Christian Grey Fifty Shas of Grey, the film adaptatn of E. After the uproar two years ago, when Newsweek wrer Ram Setooh (himself a gay man) claimed that Sean Hay was too "queeny" to play a straight man Promis, Promis, I didn't thk someone would so publicly "go there" aga.

FIFTY SHAS OF HOMOPHOBIA: WHO CAR IF THE ACTOR WHO PLAYS CHRISTIAN GREY IS GAY?

But this isn't for the reason you'd expect, and the actual reason disprov Setooh's (and Ellis') homophobic views on the subject: Dpe wi speculatn that Tom Cise is "hidg somethg, " dienc don't seem to re much whether or not Cise is a gay man; stead, they re that he's "crazy, " as the fervor over his relign and marriage have domated his late reer. It's bee the public jt don't like him anymore, gay or straight. Neil Patrick Harris has ma a send reer out of beg a gay actor playg straight.

Harris didn't e out as a gay man until 2006, two years later, and his revelatn only served to make the joke even cleverer, allowg Harold and Kumar wrers Jon Hurwz and Hayn Schlossenberg to go even further the next stallments.

'50 SHAS OF GREY' GAY FLAP

By the third film they had Harris pretend to be gay orr to sleep wh a woman he's attracted to, but the joke works not jt bee the joke self funny, which is, but bee Harris is a great ic actor wh killer timg, which is why the Tony Awards won't get rid of him. In fact, many of them have ma reers out of playg versns of those same characters other rol -- pecially Will Art and Jason this do is hold queer actors Hollywood to an unfair and homophobic double standard, whether holdg them to unrealistic expectatns or askg (as Ellis has done) that they be "genuely to" the oppose sex, when we don't expect the same thg of straight actors gog gay. This don't leave queer actors a lot of optns other than playg one of the handful of queer characters that pop up movi every year -- rol they'll have to fight straight actors was the exact reason that Rupert Everett (who gaed mastream regnn for playg Julia Roberts' gay BFF My Bt Friend's Weddg) told The Guardian 2009 that g out killed his reer.

FIFTY SHAS’ MARCIA GAY HARN OPENS UP ‘SEXUAL UNLEASHG’ IN FANDOM AND WHY BEG IN THE THICK OF IT WAS ‘FASCATG’

Acrdg to Everett, "A gay man n only do drag. In his article on the homophobia implic this systemic double standard, Jeff Labrecque of Entertament Weekly wr of such dtry "realpolik":Perhaps the reason they were accepted proment gay rol and generoly honored for dog so is bee, ep down, there's homophobic ridue that exists even the most enlightened du's psyche that is reassured by the realy that those actors are "jt pretendg" to be gay.

Labrecque is right that part of the problem has to do wh the straight male moviegoer, whose tast tend to domate what entertaments grace the multiplex, but the gay buck don't stop here. Recently, Rashida Jon urged the sndal-ridn John Travolta to e out, but whether or not he is gay (which is likewise none of my bs), any actor of his stat would be unlikely to risk killg his reer. In prev years, out actors like Jane Lynch have won Emmys for playg straight, at the same time that Chris Colfer and Jse Tyler Fergon were both nomated for playg gay men.

(This fall, out actor Andrew Rannells will likewise portray one half of a gay uple on Ryan Murphy's new s, The New Normal, which recently previewed on NBC to big numbers. ) In the same year that Parsons, Zachary Quto, Ezra Miller, Anrson Cooper, and Frank Ocean have e out to shgs or applse, we n see that the dtry is takg baby steps fosterg a culture of honty and clivens, one we need to ntue to ph a slight mea culpa on the issue, Ellis stated that the reason for this step forward is "that we've moved beyond stereotyp and gay is hot, " but that's hardly the se. We learn a few thgs about Christian: He is a ntrol eak, and he is adopted, and he is not gay (apparently many people thk he is bee he is never seen wh women spe his good looks and stat).