BY MATT MILLS – Starting off today from our implausibly obliviously homoerotic files: a recurring controversy in the world of professional wrestling resurfaced after this incident in which John Cena insinuated that Randy Orton might be conniving to get into his pants… er, cut-offs.I found the whole thing quite funny and titillating. Is that bad? I see in that clip a couple of very straight guys with a reasonably sophisticated understanding of human sexuality and masculine insecurity. But I guess that kind of thing could serve to validate lessons of homophobia imposed on young minds. I suppose it could perpetuate homophobic bullying among insecure kids. But the key to turning the hearts and minds needed to make the lives of gay kids better seems not to push discussions of sexuality and gender underground, rather it should be to guide those narratives onto a more constructive and sophisticated course. So, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), the same US group that gave an I’ll-come-out-when-it’s-safe media award to Ricky Martin last week, announced that it is working with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the producer of the shows in which Cena and Orton star, to teach its writers to be more sensitive to gay people. I would love to be a fly on the wall for that seminar.
Wrestling stories always make me think of Vancouver’s Fountainhead Pub, a cool gay sports bar in that city’s gay village that plays professional wrestling almost all the time on its many televisions. Speaking of professional wrestling, check out Of Jobbers and Heels, and Exploring the Homoerotic Undertones of Mixed Martial Arts.
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In more sobering news, a retired gay university lecturer was found stabbed to death in his home in Edinburgh, Scotland, on March 19. Robert Gray was the subject of a sustained attack, say police. We all know this kind of thing happens every day, and ordinarily I wouldn’t report on it here. But the Pink News suggests Gray is the third gay man to be murdered in Edinburgh in the last month.
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