Is Glee Causing Homophobic Backlash?

I came across this disturbing story in the Toronto Star today: Dozens in Gay Village harassed by teens…

Crossing guard Phil Ogison has had slushies thrown at his face.
Gay Village local Buddha Poitras spends many afternoons scrubbing pop off his windows.
And three weeks ago, Barbara Brown watched two teens walking down the street, loudly musing whether they should go “gay-bashing again…
In January, local florist Paul Winsor told police a group of 12 students believed to be from nearby Jarvis Collegiate Institute doused him with frozen drinks.
Days later, 30-year-old Ryan Lester, was kicked in the face and called a “faggot” at a Church St. restaurant.”

Does this sound familiar? If you’re a fan of GLEE, you may find a familiar theme here: slushing, harassment, bragging about bashing gays…


It seems from the report that a source of some of this behaviour is a high school situated nearby, Jarvis Collegiate.  I don’t remember this kind of shit going on when I lived in the neighbourhood – and this was before the major advances in LGBT civil rights. 


Could this be a Glee backlash?  Are the meatheads in school proudly associating themselves with the football team and head bully (and closet gay), Dave Karofsky?

Just as incidents of homophobic assaults have risen with the rise of equal rights for gays, has Glee, by being so G-A-Y, contributing to boys establishing their masculinity by over compensating like Dave?


It reminds me of how the most racist and bigoted adults I knew in the seventies would split their guts at things that Archie Bunker said.  And you’d ask yourself –“Don’t they get it?”  I guess they felt it didn’t apply to them. Or maybe they didn’t give a fuck because the dude’s funny and validates their own prejudices. 


Maybe that’s what these punks are doing; wearing their bigotry like shields to protect them from deadly gay rays.


 

Singing and dancing with GLEE!

I Say A Little Prayer – from GLEE



Yes, I admit, hubby and I are real big fans of GLEE. With singing and dancing football players, vulnerable, but bitchy cheerleaders, a way cool teacher, and a gym coach that made mine look like Mr. Rodgers; the show almost makes me nostalgic for those somber hallowed halls of Moncton High. Almost.

Now, you throw in some show tunes with a smattering of Burt Bacharach and you’ve got gay-bait written all over it. So it comes to no surprise that there are a lot of us huddling around the TV projecting ourselves onto those singing and dancing younger versions of ourselves or what had wished was us. If only life could just be a musical?

But it's not, Blanche, it's not. But we do have You Tube where we can all be Micky and Judy (look it up, kids); and put on our own show. So it came to no surprise that I should happen upon this little gem via Towelroad.

Now, for you straight friends, this may be a little scary. Not just because it’s so gay that it makes Perez Hilton look like Don Cherry, (actually , he does a bit, doesn't he?) but because these guys could be the blue collar worker than you passed along the street today (If that street was Ste-Catherine somewhere in the vicinity of Priape’s)

Now, I don’t know why all those religious type folk in Maine get their britches in knots over the fear that letting gay people marry will expose their children to corruption. Probably because the Catholic Church, who is spearheading the fight to roll back civil rights in our neighbouring state, has very intimate experience with exposing themselves to children, and as for corruption?.

In any case, one look at this video and you will see that we are not to be feared. Instead of stalking innocents and desecrating the sanctity of marriage, we are just as pleased as punch to go down to the family room and play with, uh, amoung ourselves. There now, feel safer?






I Say a Little Prayer – The “otter” version