"YOU BE YOU"...I MEAN IT.

I have rocks in my head today. It’s a good thing.

 

These rocks are the colorful creations of children’s book writer and illustrator Linda Kranz. She takes flat rocks and paints them so they transform to vibrant fish which remind me of Mexican folk art. The fish illustrate some of her picture books. 

 

As a school principal, I got in the tradition of kicking off each school year by reading a picture book during the first day assembly and then working with staff to create a week’s worth of activities linked to that book. One of those books was Only One You by Kranz. It’s all about celebrating individuality, the lifelong learning journey and make the world a better place. (It makes a great graduation present, a nice complement to the multiple copies the cap and gown wearer receives of Dr. Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go!)

 

Kranz followed Only One You with a companion picture book, You Be You. It’s sparser in terms of words and more cliché in terms of text. (“Some fish swim up. Some fish swim down. Some fish swim quiet. Some fish swim loud.”) I prefer the former book, but I credit You Be You with helping the title’s familiar message stick. We’re all different and that’s okay. For the past decade, I’ve often heard people spout the sentiment and I’m so glad it’s out there in a world where social media holds up influencers and selfies seem to have morphed from self-expression to a de facto ranking of people’s appearance. Shirtless buff guy gets thousands of likes while “Average” Joe gets seven with shirt on, three without.

 

The book gives me a visual image to go with the expression. Somehow painted fish make it real. I can say that “you be you” has done wonders for my outlook. Partly on account of my personality and partly due to the time when I came out as gay, I grew up extraordinarily critical of not just myself but others as well. I beat myself up over every one of my perceived flaws…and I perceived so many! It may have been a dysfunctional self-defense mechanism. To quote Taylor Swift’s song “Mean:”

You have pointed out all my flaws again

As if I don’t already see them.

 

Stick and stones couldn’t hurt me if I hurt myself first. I think so many gay men of my age bracket grew up with loads of self-hate and crap absorbed from all the haters we encountered in school, on playgrounds and sometimes even in our own families. Ideally, we would have lifted ourselves up, individually and as a community. Isn’t that the basis of Pride? But what I observed in gay bars, which seemed to be ground zero for all-things gay, was gays putting down gays. Just like our high school nemeses, we lifted ourselves up by putting others down. It was survival of the cutest/hottest/buffest.

 

Putdowns were woven into our campy humor. Long before “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” we were reading each other in jokes told at some unsuspecting patron’s expense.

“Oh, check out that tired, old queen.”

“Eww. Look at the twink over there.”

“She’s just a big, ol’ bottom.”

“That one shouldn’t wear a tank top. Her best hope is covering up…everything.”

 

Yuk, yuk.

 

Yuck.

 

Don’t believe me? Watch any version of “The Boys in the Band.” The characters are insufferable. Even listen to the banter between Will and Jack on “Will & Grace.” I love the show, but there was a running joke over Will being overweight. I may have been overly sensitive as someone with anorexia but there was no basis in fact for the putdown. That was the point. It reflected how harsh gays were in assessing their bodies and, yes, the bodies of their peers. 

 

I mastered this kind of “humor.” Sometimes I relied on it. If I could dismiss a handful of gay men in the bar, I might feel I belonged. I might have felt worthy (or worthier than them at least), despite the fact the models/actors/caterers of West Hollywood looked right through me. 

 

Critiquing others carried over to other places in my life. While my car idled at a stoplight, I might glance at someone in the crosswalk or popping out of Starbucks and I’d think something harsh about a mistaken mascara application, a misstep in choice of footwear or a hairstyle from the “wrong” decade. The assessments came easily. Joan Rivers, the “fashion police” and “Ab Fab” were also part of my pre- and prime gay years. 

 

It was a psychiatrist who made note—repeatedly—of how harsh I was about myself. My self-hate was deep, intense, unwavering. I couldn’t shift my frame of mind. What I felt was real and indisputable. 

 

A medical diagnosis paved the way for a shift from pervasive negativity. After a decades-long battle with what I thought was an eating disorder, I was finally diagnosed in late 2017. It came as a relief. The assessment meant access to supports and I spent all of 2018 and 2019 pursuing and receiving treatment. The interventions came too late. My behaviors are entrenched. As of 2023, things are status quo. I’m a functioning anorexic. 

 

The one silver lining from all the time I spent in programs was that one course I took was called “Self-Compassion.” On the first day, I was not impressed. My critical brain dismissed and tore up everything the facilitators said, every activity we did and every response from others in the program. It felt too woo-woo, too Oprah. And yet, I found myself relenting each passing week. I went from going through the motions as I’d done with every other group and individual intervention to relenting and coming to find purpose in imagery that calmed my brain and rooted me to positive places and people from my past. I caught some of my negative self-talk and shut it down instead of letting it snowball.

 

A law school classmate once said to me during a mixer our first year, “You have a lot of quirks.” He didn’t mean it as a compliment. I got the impression our ten-minute conversation exhausted him. He excused himself—more alcohol, a much-needed escape—and we never had another conversation during our three years of study. All the ways I’m different used to be handicaps, things that gave me a permanent home on the Island of the Misfit Toys. Now I think of them and roll my eyes, sometimes even smile. “You be you.” Sometimes that “pride” concept feels real. 

 

I’m prouder still that I’ve shaken off that tendency to critique passersby. Whatever the body, the clothing, the hairstyle, I let it be…as I should have done all along. If I catch myself leaning toward throwing shade (in my head), I cut myself off and mentally nod to the person in orange Crocs: “You be you.” 

 

To be sure, I have lapses. Facial tattoos and Botoxed lips are particularly challenging. (You be less you?) I continue to be a work in progress. I hope “reading” people fades from gay culture. It’s the opposite of flattering. Considering so many of us felt rejected and disconnected at times in our lives when we yearned to be accepted and loved for all that we are, “You Be You” should be embraced and practiced in our community as much or more than waving the rainbow flag and revering our divas du jour. I’m always going to be TeamOlivia but I have no problem with queers who are TeamMadonna, TeamGaga, TeamKylie or TeamSam. It’s all good. You be you.

"BARBIE" FATIGUE

So apparently there’s some movie about a doll coming out this week. Seven-year-old me would be very, very excited. Seven-year-old me would have known to suppress that excitement and go back to sorting my hockey cards which I spent all my allowances on—a photo, a bunch of player stats and piece of gum that looked and tasted like pink cardboard. That was the only pink a young boy could indulge in. 

 

For months now, we’ve been inundated with “Barbie” hype, the Warner Bros. marketing team sparing no dime and no tie-in to get us psyched to see it. When the trailer came out, every gay guy I follow on Twitter had to tweet about it. (Likes matter.) I may be confused due to the incessant Barbie blitz, but I think there was a day or two when you could photoshop yourself into a Barbie doll box and/or give your face that coveted, tanned plasticized look. So much cheaper than Botox and facelifts.

 

Don’t mistake me for a sourpuss. I’m fine with a “Barbie” movie. Like most gay men, I’m even finer with Ryan Gosling in a “Barbie” movie. Those abs, that snark. Much better than sitting through his attempts to sing in a musical. I don’t know anyone other than me who was gaga over “La La Land,” but my saying his voice was better than Pierce Brosnan’s in “Mamma Mia” is not high praise. I assume the Barbie movie’s PG-13 rating is artificially inflated from a G rather than edited down from an R so hip Gen Xers and all those gens that follow don’t think it’s kiddie fare for American Girl doll lovers. How much sexual content can there be when neither Barbie nor Ken has private parts?

 

When I was growing up, the closest I got to dolls was eyeing my sister’s collection. Sometimes she’d have a group of girls over and they’d show up with dolls for an afternoon of dolly drama. I was known to spy from the hallway which seemed more fun that taking my baseball glove outside and wondering what I was supposed to do with it. 

Thankfully, whenever I hovered near Barbie base camp, I was constantly told, Don’t touch. Being as I was a middle child who reveled in being a pest, I touched. I took. I didn’t have time to fit Barbie into different dresses or accessorize her with purses and high heels. Sure, I wanted to. I settled for the thrill of hearing my sister and her friends screaming my name. It was their tiresome tactic, designed to get my mother to intervene. Both my sister and brother matched my level of teasing with their reliance on tattle-taling. Just as I learned to hide my gayness—after I learned what that was—I masked my doll envy. I was a terror rather than a Tinker Bell. Just touching Barbie gave me a lift I couldn’t explain; the fact it never evolved to intricate doll play also made me inexplicably sad. I wanted to play with the girls. I wanted to be a girl. But no one talked about that. I was being ridiculous.

 

When Aqua released “Barbie Girl” in the ’90s, it was a huge hit. The dancefloor filled whenever it came on at Odyssey, the Vancouver gay bar I’d go to back in the day. (It’s gone. Same with The Royal, Denman Station and The Dufferin. Thanks, Grindr.) Still, the song did not suddenly make the Barbie doll hip to anyone older than a tween. It was a bouncy novelty, but it wasn’t an overt attempt to assert Barbie’s global domination. In fact, it displeased Barbie’s maker, Mattel, which sued for trademark and copyright infringement in Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc. (Mattel even owned a trademark for the color “Barbie pink” (Pantone 219D, color coordinates: #DA1884…the essential sort of gibberish for getting a TM).) Mattel alleged the song damaged Barbie’s reputation since she’s referred to as a blonde bimbo and sexualized (“Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky-panky,” along with other bland, suggestive references, typical of the average pop song). In the typical tit-for-tat arena of legal maneuverings, MCA counterclaimed, contending that Mattel defamed the company by comparing it to a bank robber. Shudders! Ultimately, the case was dismissed, the judge straying from legalese and opining, “The parties are advised to chill.” The decision came almost five years after the song’s release. Like most parodies, it had gone cold by then, relegated to the Land of Forgotten Ditties, bunkmates with Rick Dees’ “Disco Duck” and Weird Al’s “Eat It.”

 

Since I only had fleeting moments of Barbie bonding during my childhood, I resorted to finding my own play figures. There was a small window of time in which Matchbox cars subbed in, but pretending they talked was lamer than an episode of “Knight Rider” or “My Mother the Car.” Enter: Red Rose Tea. No, I didn’t play with tea bags. Let’s not make my youth that tragic. Instead, the tea company included a small ceramic animal figurine in its tea boxes. People started collecting them. I spent hours playing with a zoo’s worth of precious beasts, letting my beaver chat up my giraffe, sometimes using one of my Matchbox cars to transport animals from North America to Africa. That’s right, my cars floated and flew when they weren’t driving off my desk which served as a precarious cliff.

 

So, yeah. Playing with dolls was not okay, but my parents let the figurine fun go. What could they say? They’d fostered it via family viewings of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” every Sunday night. I honestly think all that play contributed to my becoming a vegetarian years later. I was a veritable Dr. Doolittle. I talked to the animals! How could I turn around and eat them? 

 

I’ve been waiting for some pushback over the “Barbie” movie. Perhaps Warner Bros. has too. Controversy, after all, is good for ticket sales. Maybe they need to YouTube a stage full of drag queens, donning their own interpretations of Barbie. Maybe one queen needs to have a dildo she pulls out of her Barbie pink (TM) purse or read the picture book, William’s Doll, to a four-year-old planted in the audience. That’ll rile the rabid anti-wokers (who fail to see they’re a major cog in the reviled Cancel Culture). “Boycott ‘Barbie’!” Kid Rock will shoot up a pile of dollies. The three people who hadn’t heard of the movie will get their tickets. (Pity the poor theater owner who doesn’t get to screen the film.)

 

Wasn’t there a time when there was a societal Barbie backlash? Didn’t we turn against vapidness and glamorized whiteness? Didn’t we blame that damn doll for helping Paris Hilton rise to fame? That has to be worth at least a few demerits. I haven’t seen any feminist outcry. Part of it is on account the film is directed and co-written by a woman, the accomplished Greta Gerwig. I presume there’s a wink-wink to Barbie’s glamor, a reincarnation of those old Enjoli perfume commercials with a feel-good message about how a woman can have it all (except for equal pay…let’s be reasonable).  

 

I’ll be glad when the movie finally rolls into theaters Friday, Barbie taking her place in Barbie-pink(TM) convertible Corvette, all my gay followers on Twitters rushing to gush or gut the flick based on whichever way the court of popular opinion blows. I’ll watch it at some point. I don’t feel an urgency to be the among the first. Heck, I might even wait until it finally makes it to the only streaming channel I wish to pay for. 

 

Fun fluff, I hope. Perhaps it’ll be filled with stinging barbs about global warming, galoots who salivate over conspiracy theories and America’s devotion to gun culture (a cameo by GI Joe?). Profound “Barbie”? Relax, I didn’t get my hands anywhere near the script. 

 

Frankly, I just want the marketing blitz to stop. I’m passing on Barbie ice cream, a Barbie backpack from The Gap and a possible Airbnb stay at Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse. I don’t need an Instagram boost that badly. (Follow me @gregoryjameswalters! I’m almost at four dozen followers!) I think the needless Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice song, “Barbie World,” with its heavy sampling of “Barbie Girl” has already fizzled. I suspect Burger King’s Barbie Combo (burger with pink sauce (eww!) and a strawberry milkshake) won’t spread beyond its base in Brazil. 

 

I’ll let “Barbie” be. If anyone wants to get me really excited, tell me there’s a Red Rose Tea animal figurine movie in the works. I see it as a raucous action-adventure film, with compelling commentary on endangered species, veganism and, yes, global warming. I googled and got nothing. Go figure.

 

 

"HI HONEY, I'M HOMO" (Book Review)

Subtitle: Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture

By Matt Baume

 

(Smart Pop Books, 2023)

 

Once upon a time, I lived in front of the TV set, that big old blocky thing with three main channels and a few others if the TV aerial was having a good day. For an anxious, introverted kid, this was a great form of play, no ball skills required, no need to brush up on and quote hockey stats. I stuck with my imaginary friends who were fleshed out with voices and images inside the box in the den—Peter Brady (a curly-haired middle child like me—and cute too, though I was a little confused about why that mattered), Scooby Doo, Gilligan, a Jeannie in a bottle and, most of all, Mary Richards. The ’70s was a golden TV decade for me. But then, so were the ’80s and ’90s. Television viewing offered safe exposures to humans, along with animated talking dogs, an alien from Ork and a banjo-playing frog puppet. 

 

Since I ate up TV trivia more eagerly than goals and assists for Guy Lafleur and much (but definitely not all) of my childhood confusion turned out to be about the fact I was a nascent gay, I grabbed a copy of Hi Honey, I’m Homo! Sitcoms, Specials, and the Queering of American Culture when I saw it on display at The Strand’s flagship bookstore in New York City. Even better, its author Matt Baume was scheduled for a book talk the next night. I sat in the front row—unabashedly outing my TV geekdom along with sixty other attendees. 

 

I’ve now had the time to finish the book, carefully guarding my consumption, limiting myself to a chapter per day. (Funny how my parents never monitored my TV time.) First, a small quibble with the title. I don’t love the main title, but I suppose it’s an homage to family sitcoms and the breadwinning father’s return after a day at the office. It’ll do. The subtitle, however, should be tweaked by deleting “Specials” since the book focuses on a dozen sitcoms, appearing chronologically from “Bewitched” to “Modern Family,” each allotted a chapter.

 

Baume does an excellent job weaving American political and cultural history from the time that each sitcom ran, to help show how gay references on TV comedies reflected society and, sometimes, were ahead of their time, perhaps even prodding America toward greater understanding and acceptance. If sometimes in the first half of the book it seems a stretch to devote an entire chapter to a show like “Alice” with a single gay-themed episode or “Barney Miller” having a recurring character appear on eight episodes out of a 170-episode series run, it’s because it was that difficult to get any sort of gay content on network television. In addition to gay culture still being closeted everywhere but the biggest cities, there were TV censors, the Family Viewing Hour and grassroots conservative organizations such as the National Federation for Decency that threatened boycotts and pressured advertisers. A television producer invited migraines when flirting with putting a gay character in the cast of “Soap” or by choosing to have a drag character named Beverly LaSalle on three episodes of “All in the Family.” Fortunately, the creators of these shows were committed to being topical and edgy.   

 

Baume had to make choices that other TV nerds like myself can quibble with. I would have gone with a single episode of “Mary Tyler Moore” over “Alice.” I loved both shows but the MTM depiction is more positive than the “Alice” episode wherein the titular character spins on the notion that gay men are pedophiles as she wonders whether she should allow her son to camp overnight with a gay man (and her macho, seemingly straight diner boss, Mel). I also found Baume’s gay interpretation of an episode of “Dinosaurs,” a show I’ve never seen, to be unconvincing. The Ice Age raptor son is going against parental and societal values by wanting to be vegan. Parallels can be made but there is no evidence the writers were touching on gayness. I believe the show’s writers simply thought it would be funny—and different—to have a hardcore carnivore go against his family and declare he fancied broccoli, but this really seems like standard situational comedy, a teen trying something that wigs out the parents.

 

I can’t figure out why Baume didn’t include a chapter about the Tony Randall-Swoosie Kurtz sitcom, “Love, Sidney,” which aired forty-four episodes over two seasons from 1981-1983 and, according to Wikipedia “was the first program on American television to feature a gay character as the central character.” (Randall’s Felix Unger on TV’s “The Odd Couple” (1970-1975) also came off as gay to many viewers based on neatnik, effeminate stereotypes.) 

It’s also a mystery why Showtime’s “Brothers” (1984-1989), about three brothers, one of whom is gay, gets short shrift. That sitcom illustrates how the burgeoning cable channels could take more chances which, ultimately, moved the bar for the major networks as well. Furthermore, the entire chapter on “Cheers” feels like a cheap attempt to attract readers being as it was such a ratings success. The show’s gay content is scant whereas another ratings juggernaut, “Roseanne,” was far more gay-friendly, featuring Sandra Bernhard as a bisexual friend and Martin Mull as Roseanne’s boss, Leon, who eventually marries Fred Willard’s attorney character, Scott. (These supporting characters, while groundbreaking, didn’t make up for the fact that neither Roseanne’s sister, Jackie (Laurie Metcalfe), or daughter Darlene (played by lesbian actress Sara Gilbert) weren’t written as queer, but that’s part of the discussion Baume could have fleshed out.) I'm wondering if Baume or his publisher nixed the "Roseanne" chapter since Roseanne Barr has fallen so epically...and not on account of her anthem singing.

 

One thing I tired of in Hi Honey was all the repetition. The negative depiction of homosexuality on “Marcus Welby, M.D.” appears in four separate parts of the book. An account of people protesting outside the offices of “Soap” is mentioned verbatim in the book’s opening vignette and then a hundred pages later. It seems incidents of repetition are an editorial choice based on an assumption that some readers will skip chapters about shows they didn’t know or like, but this dummies things down (and offers annoying moments) for people like me who opt to read from cover to cover. Rather than harping on “Marcus Welby,” I’d have loved some elaboration on an almost random reference on page 101 about the fact ABC employed an on-staff psychic named Beverly Dean. Yes, things were kooky in the ’70s! 

 

Sigh. Baume’s book is still interesting for this TV aficionado. When the gay content is more apparent, giving him more to work with, the chapters are much more interesting. The chapter on “Ellen” is furtive ground, even if I wanted more in-depth analysis of the clunky yet earnest season that followed Ellen Morgan outing herself to Laura Dern’s Susan and, via microphone, to other airport passengers. I would have loved a tub of popcorn as I gobbled down Baume’s accounts of “Will & Grace” and “Modern Family.” 

    

Television has come a long way in its portrayals of queer characters. Perhaps today’s awkward, nascent gay boys have more opportunities to understand their identities by catching content so accessible on phone and laptop screens. 

DOES THIS JERSEY MAKE ME GAY?

I suppose it was inevitable that special Pride-themed jerseys will no longer be worn by NHL players. In many ways, it felt like a bold move to have hockey players wear them once a year during a game night warmup. The boldness came from the fact sporting environments are not known for being progressive in terms of LGBTQ acceptance. Locker rooms have long been places where homophobic remarks are frequently made and go unchecked. Being gay has been viewed as the antithesis of being a jock. When I was growing up, people perceived as gay were often called sissies and one major criterion for being perceived as gay was being bad at sports. Homophobia has also been a contributing factor to unfiltered locker room chatter that objectifies women and goes into lurid details about sexual escapades with them. If you didn’t join in, you risked standing out for the “wrong” reasons. What are you…gay? 

 

Still, star athletes are often viewed by large swaths of the public as heroes and role models. This has always seemed like sheer folly to me. Using a stick to swat a puck in a net or to send a ball over the fence means you may have the right skills to compete at a high level in games. It doesn’t mean your thoughts about social justice, climate change or the upcoming “Barbie” movie should be held in high regard. But, in this society, they often are. That’s why it mattered when an entire hockey team did its pre-game skate in shirts with little rainbow icons. Sidney Crosby’s wearing it! Gee, maybe gay’s okay.

 

Obviously, it’s not that simple. Changing long-held views takes time. For many, it’s hard to accept differences when their social and work worlds have little or no representation of those differences. Parts of society continue to be segregated, no longer by legal barriers, but by personal assessments of the need to feel and belong. Sidney Crosby needs to wear that colorful jersey next year and the year after that. That makes it less of a “stunt” and more of an ongoing tradition. Conservatives are big on tradition.

 

While professional teams play in big cities which tend to be more diversely populated and, consequently, more accepting, the games are watched by fans throughout the host state. It’s something to do. (For example, I became a regular watcher of Vancouver Canuck games when I moved to a rural area of BC. Back in Vancouver, I haven’t watched at all.) This is especially important because there are NHL teams in many red states and swing states.

Dallas Stars…Texas

Carolina Hurricanes…North Carolina

Columbus Blue Jackets…Ohio 

Nashville Predators…Tennessee

Vegas Golden Knights…Nevada

Tampa Bay Lightning…Florida

Florida Panthers

Arizona Coyotes

 

That's right, Bud Light.
Deal with it.

An entire hockey squad wearing rainbows, even for a few minutes once a year during the opening skate while bros in man caves crack a beer and rip open a bag of chips, can have an impact. Given that friendship circles, Twitter followers and chosen “news” outlets may fully align with a particular way of thinking, that warmup may be the only exposure to a message that gay is okay.

 

Brendan Burke with his dad.

One of the big forces giving rise to Pride nights is the organization You Can Play which formally came to be in March 2012 as a tribute legacy to Brendan Burke, after he died in a car accident at the age of 21 in 2010. Brendan was the son of NHL coach Brian Burke and was openly gay as a student manager of a hockey team at Ohio’s Miami University. It’s telling as to how rare the intersection of homosexuality and pro hockey were that Brendan got airtime in 2009 on a Canadian sports TV station during a game intermission. Sure, his dad was a big-time name in pro hockey but Brendan wasn’t. The gay son of an NHL coach made news because Brendan was “the closest person to the NHL ever to come out publicly and say that he is gay.” Good on Brendan but a sad statement on professional hockey.

 

After Brendan’s more public coming out, his brother, Patrick, said, “I waited to get a negative email, or to read a damning article, or to hear a snide comment at a game. I waited, and I waited, and I waited ... and I got what I should have expected the entire time: love, support, and admiration.” Ain’t that nice? That was then.

  

In 2013, the Florida Panthers were the first NHL team to have a Pride night. Every team now has a Pride night, but some such events haven’t included players wearing special Pride jerseys which are later auctioned off for charity. Various teams in the league have other themed nights to raise awareness about cancer and to honor people in the military. Hosting a Pride night and wearing these special shirts were good PR until they weren’t.

 

Times have changed. I go back to Patrick’s quote as he braced for hate when his brother came out. It didn’t happen. There were, of course, people who would not have accepted Brendan Burke as a gay man but, even as marriage equality was still playing out, they had the sense to keep their opinions to themselves or to their circle of people who thought like they did.

 

There have long been places for hating on gays and it took on an air of legitimacy with people like Rush Limbaugh having a platform but hate as a rallying cry and as a means to counter political criticism became an arena sport once Trump launched his first presidential campaign. Politics became an alt version of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). 

 

“BUILD THAT WALL!” 

“LOCK HER UP!”

 

By golly, you could become a full-fledged club member by purchasing a special red baseball cap. 

 

No healthcare platform? So what. BOOORRRING!  

 

LGBTQ haters are emboldened once again due, in part, to Republican efforts, especially at the state level, to make LGBTQ issues a threat to families. We’re a threat again. We’re sinners and perverts. 

 

Our rights are under attack once again because it’s politically expedient. The Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade so there needs to be another ticket item to drum up donations and get people worked up enough to cast votes. Hate on gays—and especially on people who identify as trans—is a no-brainer. 

 

Men in dresses who read picture books will make your kids gay!

Bearded dudes who say they’re trans will check out your wives in women’s restrooms!

Muscled teen boys will take all the blue ribbons meant for your daughters at the local track meet!

 

These fear-based laws are easier to push through Republican-majority legislatures than figuring out how to bring new jobs to the state, deciding what to do about people addicted to Fentanyl or coming up with more funds for maintaining state highways when you’ve promised tax cuts.

 

Yes, professional jocks going for a little skate while wearing rainbows is the right kind of messaging to hit home. 

 

But that’s over. A handful of NHL players refused to wear the jerseys. Some Russian players asserted it would be viewed as a political statement back home, making things difficult for family members there. Non-Russians went with the position that the colorful shirts ran counter to their religious beliefs. I’m going to give these players the benefit of the doubt and assume they were one hundred percent sincere. Free speech, freedom of religion…I’m fine with that. Nobody is 100% liked. Someone probably disliked Betty White. 

 

Here's where it gets tricky. Is the annual pregame skate tarnished by the fact one or two players opt out and stay in the locker room? Does it have to be all or nothing?

 

I would say that having 95% of a pro hockey team that plays in Florida put on a Pride jersey is a very strong statement. Cue Lady Gaga: applause, applause. If we say it was okay for Colin Kaepernick to take a knee during the national anthem—a far bolder act occurring since it involved one of America’s most patriotic rituals—it’s okay for Eric Staal or brother Marc to be out of sight during a game warmup.

 

The focus on the exception rather than the overwhelming majority created snappy online news stories and allowed for Twitter rants spewing hate about homophobic players who refused to come out…of the locker room. Suddenly, a lot of people who think like me had tweets to “like” and retweet. Hate shows up on both sides. 

 

Again, 95% of a group of professional jocks slipped on a shirt that said, in hockey, You Can Play. As another Pride Night slogan says, Hockey Is For Everyone. That’s big in a league that has yet to have a single openly gay player play a single game. (Luke Prokop came out in 2021. He was drafted by the Nashville Predators but thus far has only played for farm clubs of the Western Hockey League.) The Pride jersey photo op is good for fans and it’s good for closeted players who may inch closer to coming out, if not in the press, then at least to one or two teammates, perhaps eventually to the whole squad. That can do wonders for their mental health.

 

Unfortunately, the flak from a few players bowing out of the colorful pre-game fashion show made NHL bigwigs antsy. What began as good PR was turning into bad PR. It highlighted the problem that the league has had all along: despite “You Can Play” and “Hockey Is For Everyone,” the organization couldn’t hold up a single Duck, Shark or Flame as a gay spokesperson. Gay Penguins were for picture books, gay Stars for Ryan Murphy productions. Jersey nights were window dressing without any substance behind it. Was the possible homophobia of a few players the truer character of the league?

 

And so it ended. No more jersey nights. Not for Pride nor for military appreciation nor for cancer. Rather than staying strong behind a display of near-total solidarity in wearing flashy jerseys that meant something, NHL owners threw in the towel. When something’s easy, all aboard. When a few dissidents created a little heat, there wasn’t enough conviction to take a strong stand. The cause isn’t important enough. As NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said, “[I]t’s become a distraction.” Pride nights can continue but NHL players won’t be part of it. 

 

Huh. 

 

Feels like getting hit in the mouth with a puck. What’s left is a toothless expression. 

__________

        [To read You Can Play's response to the cancellation of 

        jersey nights, click here.]

AND TANGO MAKES THREE

Written by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell

 

Illustrated by Henry Cole

 

(Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2005)

 

Almost two decades ago, penguins were having a moment. “Trending,” we would say today. In 2005, the $8-million documentary, “March of the Penguins” grossed $127 million at the box office. “Happy Feet,” an animated feature, followed in 2006, with a risky budget of $100 million. Happy ending: it took in $384 million. 

 

Preceding these was a 2004 article in The New York Times, “Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name,” featuring Roy and Silo, two chinstrap penguins in the Central Park Zoo, described as “completely devoted to each other.” The article noted that Roy and Silo were not a zoo penguin anomaly. “Before them, the Central Park Zoo had Georgey and Mickey, two female Gentoo penguins who tried to incubate eggs together. And Wendell and Cass, a devoted male African penguin pair, live at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island.” There were more scientific revelations, including reference to a book that noted homosexual behaviour in 450 species. 

 

Interesting. But let’s get back to penguins and that Central Park pair, Roy and Silo. In 2005, they starred in the nonfiction picture book, And Tango Makes Three. Book shelf lives are short and this penguin title would have gone the way of the dodo by now but for book bannings and missions to remove certain content from elementary school libraries. On the positive side, it also gets a mention every June during Pride month when publications put out lists of gay books. I finally decided to browse the book myself.

 

Opus in a fruity hat...

did that ruffle tail feathers?

My first impression was neither a sense of shock nor pride at the suggestion of gay penguins. (Note: “gay” is never used in the book.) Instead, I was aghast that Roy and Silo would be held up as gay icons of the animal world. I am no penguin aficionado—in fact, I’ve never seen either of the box office hit movies I mentioned in the first paragraph. Perhaps penguins are true “bird brains” in the sense they’re not all that bright. My favorite penguin is Opus, a clever, amusing comic strip creation of Pulitzer Prize-winner Berkeley Breathed, appearing in the classic syndicated titles “Bloom County,” “Outland” and, at long last, just “Opus.” Neither Roy nor Silo would be able to match wits with Opus. As the book explains, the pair gathered stones, as penguins do, to make a nest. With the nest in place, “[e]very night Roy and Silo slept there together, just like the other penguin couples.” In time, they realized that the mama penguins perched on the other nests had each laid an egg.

 

It gets embarrassing. “Roy and Silo had no egg to sit on and keep warm. They had no baby chick to feed and cuddle and love. Their nest was nice, but it was a little empty.” Hoo boy. Good thing they’re cute in their little tuxedos. Let’s not make them grand marshals at any Pride parade. 

 

The rock that would not hatch.

It gets more embarrassing. “One day Roy found something that looked like what the other penguins were hatching and he brought it to their nest. It was a rock”—um, kinda like the stones that made the nest?—“but Silo carefully sat on it. And sat…” The two took turns sitting on the rock. SPOILER ALERT: “But nothing happened.”

 

Really, book banners, is this a story you want to keep away from impressionable young children? If you’re homophobic, it seems this book may even help your cause. Being gay makes you dumb. Maybe conservative media would run with it, appearing on Fox News with the news banner, “Homosexuality kills brain cells.” 

 

I don’t know. Far be it for me to offer fuel to enemy lines.

 

I suppose when you’re singularly focused on “gay is bad” you don’t bother with nuances or any sort of critical thinking. The book explains that Roy and Silo are “boys” (forgoing males since that term may be too sophisticated for its targeted readers) and “they did everything together.” Everything includes bowing, singing, walking and swimming. 

 

Again, I’m feeling neither proud nor scandalized.

 

At any rate, on to the smut…

 

Penguins necking

Maybe all hell broke loose though when Roy and Silo “wound their necks around each other.” To be clear, neither hugging nor kissing is mentioned. Certain adults might read all sorts of lascivious behavior into that, but a kid (whose development understands “boys” but not “males”) is going to think that’s the equivalent of joshing, play-fighting or putting their arms around one another. This is what primary students do. Who’s taking this to supposedly taboo terrain? I suppose it’s the one human character in the book, Mr. Gramzay, a zookeeper, who must finally make book banners rabid, when he “thought to himself, ‘They must be in love.’” Sounds sweet to me. 

 

Typical young girl reaction: “Ahhhh” because any mention of love elicits that. Typical boy reaction: “Ewwww” because any reference to love is gross. This isn’t a knee-jerk homophobic response. Young boys are socialized to think lovey-dovey stuff is icky. 

 

I’m having a moment, wondering how many book banners might be more like Silo and Roy than they’d like to believe, someday being reincarnated as penguins who would wait for their own rocks to hatch. Naturally, they’d dismiss the absurdity and heresy of such speculation since reincarnation is not a Christian concept. But I’m still wondering.

 

A Pro Life moment, lost on rabid banners.

Eventually, Gramzay finds an egg that needs tending and sets it in Roy and Silo’s nest. They’d done such a good job of tending to a rock, after all. (Kudos, guys! It didn’t roll away!) Unlike the rock, the egg hatches. Gramzay calls the chick Tango, reasoning, “because it takes two to make a Tango.” Most primary kids won’t know that a tango is a dance so, whoever is reading to them can explain this. I suspect kids will just be happy that the baby was born. If anything, they’ll wonder why the egg came up as a spare during nesting season. The author’s note at the back of the book tells readers that the egg was one of two belonging to penguins Betty and Porkey, but that pair had never been able to care for two at once so, basically, one of the eggs would need to be tended to by other penguins to hatch. Seems like an above and beyond pro-life effort the book banners could have spun, but winding necks and loving “boy” penguins had already been duly offensive.

 

I'd forgotten the mention of "two daddies." 

In the two decades since,it doesn't seem to 

have radically altered the penguin world.

I’m sorry, it seems preposterously silly to get stirred up over this book and to seek to keep it away from children. There is no doubt that banning efforts have led to more young and older readers reading this book than would ever have been imaginable. For young penguin lovers—and, relax, easily triggered conservatives, I’m speaking generally of affection, not bestiality; what makes people’s minds go to such places anyway?—I’d recommend the picture books 365 Penguins, wherein a growing domesticated colony is content to be stashed in filing cabinets or stacked as pyramids, and Penguin and Pinecone, about another dopey main character who befriends, yes, a pinecone. It’s a super cute story, at least. (Where are the activists seeking smarter portrayals of penguins in children’s lit?) 

 

Personally, I’m not giving the Tango book another thought. I’d rather spend twenty minutes reading old “Bloom County” comics, smiling over Opus and saving any offense for the antics of Bill the Cat. In fact, that’s exactly what I’m setting out to do…