Subscribe to Breaking NewsLowenstein: Can Ellen change hearts and minds?
I’ve been feeling pretty cynical of late. Obama forms council on women and girls? I was tempted to dismiss it as ceremonial. The administration indicates it will sign on to the UN Declaration calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality? Eh, what’s the actual impact of an inherently toothless declaration?
Real change, I’ve been considering, will only come when we’re able to change real minds and hearts.
It’s perhaps not entirely shocking, then, that my cynicism lifted briefly when I saw the clips of Ellen DeGeneres interviewing her wife Portia de Rossi from Monday’s episode of The Ellen Degeneres Show. Ellen Tarlin at Slate wrote a post that partly explains why I feel so positive about Ellen’s interview:
“But what I am impressed by most is how forthright she is about her sexual orientation, despite the fact that she has a large, broad, national, daytime network audience that certainly must include more than just a few homophobes. And Ellen’s likability must do much to warm their hearts.
She routinely mentions her wife, Portia de Rossi, their recent marriage, and throws the details of their lives together into her jokes regularly.
Maybe I am naive, but I think this is how our country will finally change: When people who are anti-gay finally learn that someone they already know and love is gay, and they want every happiness for their loved one that they are entitled to. Or even better, when they are willing to let someone who they know is gay into their lives, despite their homosexuality.”
How many minds were changed after that interview aired? Maybe a few, but maybe none. How many minds are changed every year that Ellen spends hundreds of hours during hundreds of shows referencing her wife Portia, their wedding, their house, their pets? Countless.
I’m not sure the importance of Ellen being herself on national television every day can be overstated. The issue of gay marriage is, like a lot of issues important to the LGBT community, an emotional one for most Americans. People’s views are driven by fear, of course, but also by love.
Polls show time and again that the most important factor in predicting a person’s opinion on gay rights is if that person knows a gay person. That kind of personal interaction—which is really a feeling of investment—is more important than political affiliation, region, age, religion, or anything else.
In other words, no one wants to discriminate against the people they love.
For the millions of viewers who spend every afternoon inviting Ellen into their homes, her very matter-of-fact attitude toward her sexuality is immensely powerful and influential. The women and men that watch her show every day know about every aspect of her life, she’s as real to them as their friends or neighbors. If they feel that connection with her, and are informed about the challenges she faces as a gay woman with unequal rights, they’ll be swayed. Slowly, perhaps, but eventually. After all, who could possibly vote to divorce Ellen?
So thanks, Ellen, for your courage, your commitment, and for sharing your beautiful family with the world.
[H/T Jezebel]
Harvey Milk taught us this in the days of the Briggs initiative in California. But when Prop 8 came ’round, establishment Gay organizers promptly shut all the Gay Couples in a closet and proceeded to lose what should have been a shoo-in compared to Briggs. Not even one television Ad featured a Gay couple.
Shame on them, shame on Barney Frank, and shame on all the “acceptable and accepted” Gay politicos who forgot the simple lessons we learned long ago.
Don’t forget, organizers – you are accepted by “them” because they think you can control “us”. Once we abandon you and return to our roots, you will have no more value to them and you’ll taste the real world.
When we two husbands, American men who fell in love at first sight in 1976 and married in Canada in 2003, have full civil equality in our homeland, then we’ll sit back and speculate on the reasons how that happened. Meanwhile, every step towards educating heterosexuals about their heterosexual-supremacist rules is a step closer the dawning of that day.
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She has money and lot of us don’t.
With money….a lot of things can happen.
She probably has great health insurance that would have covered Portia anyway even if CA didn’t have civil unions.
Let’s just say Ellen doesn’t represent the whole community and marriage is a lot more financially important to us than it is to Ellen.
I think what gays on TV do is change the future more than the now. People against gay rights may accept Ellen, but just Ellen despite that she’s gay.
It’s the next generation of voters that will have grown up seeing gay people on TV that changes the game.
So Ellen is a “character”. Will Truman was a character too. Did a lot of good for public acceptance. At least people who like them and think of them as representative of all gays will maybe have more positive attitudes toward a “real” gay person when they finally meet one. What happens when they do finally meet a “real” one is up to you and me.
2 WOMEN i CANNOT STAND ON TV . ELLEN AND TYRA.
Once upon a time, a comedian named Rosie was very popular and on the way up. At the same time, another comedian named Ellen was also popular, but she was not only on her way down, but the more her media character voiced her thoughts, the more she was derided and ridiculed. Ellen spent her time in the wilderness (like Moses). Rosie got her own TV show, left that and went to another one, then left that too. While that was happening, Ellen got another TV show and became a ver ystrong media commodity.
Who on TV doesn’t owe something to someone? Ellen bought Rosie the space to come out, and note that neither woman is poor today. Ellen seems less confrontational by nature; as far as the pet thing goes, everybody has their emotional point where they’re gonna do what they have to so they get to who/what/where they need to. Ellen went first, Rosie followed. Each has her own style. Both are closer to their true styles now than they were when their respective controversies arose. I think both make a positive difference.
I liked her sitcom. I like this show.
She does what she supposed on the show. Entertain.
Expecting every Gay woman to be an in your face militant lesbian is the same as expecting ever Gay man to be a prissy girly queen. Both are unrealistic.
We come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and demeanors.
Don’t criticize her because she’s not you.
P.S. Rosie always seemed fake on her show. She seems more “real” now. I like it.
I enjoyed the sentiment of this piece. You must be a very positive human.
Ellen is a puppet in many ways. She panders to the heterosexual community and everyone knows. She is a “safe” representation. She can’t speak for me. We don’t even speak the same language. She did cash in on the gay. Everyone needs a gay, is more what she proves. Which was sort of the point of the piece I liked. Maybe if everyone who needs a gay would stand up for the gays we’d be ok.
Oh, please. Ellen is not “being herself” on that program–she is playing a character. We got a much more vivid idea of how manipulative and uncaring she was in that little exchange with the poor (and I do mean “poor”) pet rescue volunteer. She and her wife were as duplicitous as all heck.
Rosie O’Donnell used to come off as the “Queen of Nice,” and people used to love her. How many people in mid-America love her now? How counter-productive was that?
If people in mid-America are more persuaded by characters on TV than their neighbors, it’s because characters on TV are fictional. Lots of people loved Sidney Portier and Nat King Cole in a world when they would never in a million years have voted in favor of rights for African Americans.
People are very nice about non-threatening figures on the TV that they will never meet. This has no bearing on what they do with real live people in real live situations, nor in how they vote because the characters on TV aren’t real. Please–could we have some sensible commentary here?
i doubt it. I loved the episode where Ellen asked the ‘gay icon’ saint Hillary Clinton if she believed in gay marriage, and Clinton said NO. Obama gave the same answer but somehow Obama is bad and Hillary is good even though they both prefer civil unions.
Ellen has done more to further gay acceptance and gay rights than the HRC, Stonewall Democrats, Log Cabin Republicans and Obama’s Magical Mystery Tour of Hope put together.
Not only is Ellen articulate and passionate but she is able to relate to the masses without causing offense.
I for one thank Ellen for all that she has done and all that she likely will do in the future.
I couldn’t agree more. I love Ellen and her courage and passion are to be commended.
Thank God that gay kids today have such a positive role model.It just makes me feel so proud to have someone like Ellen being a voice
for gay people everywhere.