GLAAD to be gay

Ha. The scabrous American lobby group Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, otherwise known as the oxymoronic GLAAD, has declined to trash "Basic Instinct 2," a movie in which Sharon Stone reprises her 1992 role as a bisexual psycho killer.

GLAAD, of course likes to trash everything. Remember the press release condemning a soap opera for featuring a lesbian character's rape? Apparently it hadn't occurred to the mindless watchdogs at GLAAD that, in fact, lesbians do get raped as some sort of twisted payback by straight men. And that publicizing that evil might be a good thing. (On that one, GLAAD eventually apologized.) Or how about the more recent Gene Shalit controversy, where a gay-positive movie critic -- who's written a book about accepting his gay son -- was pilloried for disliking what he saw as Brokeback Mountain's obsessive stalker character -- something he thought could hurt the gay movement. For this well-meaning opinion, Shalit was forced into an abject apology. Just a couple of GLAAD's embarrassments.

It's a group that sees anything negative as inherently evil. As if there are no bisexual killers. As if a work of the imagination is real. But at the same time, it refuses to see that it is possible to demystify queer life via the medium of entertainment. (And no, these sentences are not contradictory.)

GLAAD's sudden silence on "Basic Instinct 2" is a step forward, you'd think. Not.

Because it's undoubtedly got nothing to do with a change of heart, and everything to do with BI2's star.

"Today, bisexual activists and GLAAD seem uninterested in the release of the sequel. GLAAD representatives said they were too busy planning their media awards gala to talk to the Blade about it, and they weren’t even planning to screen the film until just before its opening," notes this publication. Why would GLAAD stick its collective head under the covers? Just a guess: "Sharon Stone has become something of a gay icon."

More than that, Stone has picked up an award from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and chairs the American Foundation for AIDS Research's annual fundraising campaign.

GLAAD may be humourless; it may not understand camp, nor even everyday gay reality. It doesn't get the line between fact and fiction. But it sure understands that it can't afford to piss off Sharon Stone. We can add rank hypocrisy and opportunism to GLAAD's faults.