Every Goliath has its David

Everyone was talking about Barack Obama‘s first trip to Ottawa yesterday but his trip was a total failure, says New York City porn czar Michael Lucas. After Canadian border guards banned his film “Piss!” (you read it here first), Lucas penned a latter to Obama demanding he take it up with Stephen Harper. Lucas wrote:

As our economy teeters on the brink of total collapse, it would be foolish to deny access of such a high quality, proven money maker onto shelves of the Great White North’s porn stores.

Who wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall for that conversation?

But I doubt it (ahem) came up — they probably thought like Minnesota state senator Paul Koering who, despite being gay, voted against a gay marriage bill because, he says, “the state faces bigger problems.” Uh-huh. The incredibly manly conservative Jesus’ General explores just what those are.

Gay or straight, it’s indeed the failing economy that’s our biggest issue but watch how the amazingly insane Georgia State Rep. Charlice Byrd wants to use the crisis to fire all the university queer theory professors! For sheer unadulterated homophobia, this is total “Heart of Darkness” stuff right here:

But not all our enemies are without — Tyra Banks had three truly irritating homophobes on her show, except the kooky daytime TV twist here is that they’re all self-loathing homosexuals. How cheery!

There are four more segments — follow the YouTube link if you can stomach it — but I’d rather direct you to a more provocative take on the same subject: the sexy “Shortbus” actor/singer Jay Brannan would be far less quick to judge these guys — he says he’s “sick of talking about it”:

 

I don’t want my album or the films I’m in to be in the “gay section” of a music or video store. I think having a gay section at the video store is the same as asking black people to drink from a different water fountain, or to sit at the back of the bus…”gay” shouldn’t BE a genre.

Careful, Jay — you’re going to put me out of work! I disagree with him insofar that comments like his tend to mutate into a different kind of closet or worse, attitudes like those Tyra guys, but he is correct in reading how the lines between straight and gay culture are getting ever blurrier.

For instance, take the British “twee-pop” duo The Boy Least Likely To — their adorable whimsy makes them fabulously fey. Are they gay? Are they straight? Who cares, as long as they keep subverting macho indie-rock clichés? In a homophobic world, they’re letting us know that “Every Goliath Has Its David”.

So grab your slingshot and have a great weekend!

A former editor of the late, lamented fab magazine, Scott has been writing for Xtra since 2007 on a variety of topics in news pieces, interviews, blogs, reviews and humour pieces. He lives on the Danforth with his boyfriend of 12 years, a manic Jack Russell Terrier, a well-stocked mini-bar and a shelf of toy Daleks.

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