Sunday, May 30, 2004

Watch Prom Queen on Tuesday night

Watch CTV for Prom Queen on Tuesday, June 1 at 9pm ET
Its about the Marc Hall case, where a boy had to sue the school board to take his date to his high school prom. So please watch it -- apparently CTV is getting hatemail, and the production company's offices were trashed the other day, so we need to prove that there is a wide audience for a story like this.
There was an old episode of MASH on the other night when Hawkeye is dealing with a gay soldier. And it struck me how much things have changed in the media, how stories like Marc Hall's are seen now as human rights stories, not sexuality stories. It used to be that "gay" stories were actually about straight people, because the filmmakers assumed that the only important or interesting part of the story was how a straight person dealt with a gay/lesbian person -- the "villian" often seemed to be the gay person himself or herself, who had made everyone else so uncomfortable. Oh well, I suppose it was a start. But now, "gay" storylines are about how a gay person feels himself or herself, and usually in relation to a civil rights issue, and the "villian" is the homophobe. This has changed in a very short time, really.
But there is still enough hate to go around, unfortunately. PFLAG has lots of resources, by the way, for anyone who is gay or who has gay friends or children. I once read somewhere that PFLAG says that the best way to end prejudice against gay people is to know one.

No comments: