Posted on 03/17/2004 5:42:10 AM PST by truthandlife
The black rapper 50 Cent used several anti-gay slurs in an April interview with Playboy magazine, but even so, a homosexual advocacy group has restrained its criticism of him -- even inviting him to "get to know the LGBT community."
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) offered a relatively mild response to words uttered by rapper 50 Cent, in marked contrast to GLAAD's relentless attack on a conservative radio talk-show host several years ago. That talk show host - Dr. Laura Schlessinger - never said the words that 50 Cent did.
"I ain't into faggots," 50 Cent told the most recent issue of Playboy . "I don't like gay people around me, because I'm not comfortable with what their thoughts are. I'm not prejudiced. I just don't go with gay people and kick it - we don't have that much in common. I'd rather hang out with a straight dude. But women who like women, that's cool," he said.
Later in the interview, 50 Cent said, "It's OK to write that I'm prejudiced. This is as honest as I could possibly be with you. When people become celebrities they change the way they speak. But my conversation with you is exactly the way I would have a conversation on the street. We refer to gay people as faggots, as homos. It could be disrespectful, but that's the facts."
GLAAD issued a press release on Tuesday, expressing "concern" over 50 Cent's comments. The group said it "believes that it can be dangerous to use words like 'faggot' and 'homo' when talking about the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community."
According to GLAAD, 50 Cent, as a public figure, should realize that his words can have a huge impact.
"We applaud his honesty in talking about the murder of his bisexual mother and appreciate his acknowledgement that he is not comfortable with gay people. We know that confronting homophobia can indeed be uncomfortable," said GLAAD's People of Color Media Manager C. Riley Snorton.
"But honesty is always the first step in overcoming the desire to judge those who are different than us and in overcoming prejudice."
Snorton said a good way for 50 Cent to overcome prejudice would be to attend GLAAD's annual media awards. "I'd like to invite 50 Cent as my personal guest," he added.
"GLAAD encourages 50 Cent to get to know the LGBT community, and we are fully confident that in doing so he will find that he has more in common with us than he thinks," the press release concluded.
Dr. Laura's 'Rhetoric and Defamation'
In contrast to its gentle treatment of 50 Cent, GLAAD showed no such restraint in its three-year campaign against conservative talk show host Dr. Laura Schlesinger.
In a March 20, 2001 press release, GLAAD announced it had culminated its "three-year public education campaign against the rhetoric of talk-show host Laura Schlessinger."
The group hailed the cancellation of Schlessinger's TV show as a "major victory against defamation and anti-gay intolerance."
GLAAD said it launched its campaign against Schlessinger in 1998, when she "began using terms such as 'deviant,' 'disordered' and 'biological error' to describe gays and lesbians."
"In coalition with thousands of local activists from across the country, we have held Laura Schlessinger accountable for her defamation of our community," GLAAD Executive Director Joan M. Garry said at the time.
"And we've sent a strong message that we are no longer an easy target for prejudice. GLAAD hopes the cancellation of 'Dr. Laura' will make media corporations think twice about giving a platform to someone who promotes derision and exclusion. Such decisions will never go unchallenged."
GLAAD accused Dr. Laura of perpetuating misinformation and reinforcing damaging stereotypes about homosexuality (including the concept that homosexuals can choose to change their behavior).
Like many homosexual activists, GLAAD rejects the notion that homosexuals can be "converted" to heterosexuality. It calls the notion "dangerous."
According to GLAAD, "Schlessinger's attacks first came to GLAAD's attention in 1997 when she characterized homosexuality as a "biological faux pas" in her syndicated newspaper column. In February 1998 and March 1999, GLAAD Executive Director Joan M. Garry met with Schlessinger in an unproductive effort to educate her about the hurtful impact of her words. When Schlessinger signed with Paramount Domestic Television for a TV talk show in mid-1999, GLAAD launched a campaign to bring the topic of defamatory language into the national public consciousness."
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation says it is "dedicated to promoting and ensuring fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media as a means of eliminating homophobia and discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation."
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Thats how this ( white guy) sees it too.
They desperately want to be included in the civil rights debate, so criticism of blacks is definetly out.
Paging George Orwell!
From the article:
"In coalition with thousands of local activists from across the country, we have held Laura Schlessinger accountable for her defamation of our community," GLAAD Executive Director Joan M. Garry said at the time.
"And we've sent a strong message that we are no longer an easy target for prejudice. GLAAD hopes the cancellation of 'Dr. Laura' will make media corporations think twice about giving a platform to someone who promotes derision and exclusion. Such decisions will never go unchallenged."
GLAAD accused Dr. Laura of perpetuating misinformation and reinforcing damaging stereotypes about homosexuality (including the concept that homosexuals can choose to change their behavior).
When A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality was published last month, the book's publisher, InterVarsity Press, placed an advertisement for the book in the popular magazine Psychology Today.
Shortly after the ad appeared, a lesbian activist and psychotherapist named Betty Berzon contacted Psychology Today's editor Robert Epstein to express her outrage.
Berzon was incensed that the magazine would accept an advertisement for A Parent's Guide, a book which views homosexuality as a developmental condition rather than a core identity. Berzon claimed that Epstein's magazine should have refused to print the ad. She threatened to organize a boycott against the magazine, and then followed up by sending out a flurry of postings on gay and lesbian internet sites in order to gain support for an organized boycott...
A story about the conflict was published in the December 10th issue of the gay magazine The Advocate, by columnist Michelangelo Signorile.
"When the editor in chief of Psychology Today reveals his support for so-called conversion therapies to turn gays straight, what does that say about the state of American psychology?" asked Signorile"
Signorile then described Epstein and his work as editor of Psychology Today in unflattering terms. He said the editor was a publicity seeker who "might view such a position [advertising a non-gay-affirmative book] as an attention grabber."
However, Signorile warned, editor Epstein would do well to remember what the gay community had succeeded in doing not so long ago to Dr. Laura. In a series of acrimonious and very public protests, gay activists were instrumental in forcing Dr. Laura's television show off the air by flooding the airwaves, the print media, and the streets outside the TV studio with protests that frightened off her advertisers.
Dr. Epstein had published the advertisement for A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, and expressed support for reorientation therapy for unwanted homosexuality, "perhaps not realizing," Signorile said, " that the last celebrity 'doctor' who stepped into the homosexuality debate with dubious assertions--Laura Schlessinger--soon saw her multi-million dollar career deflate, as gay activists supported successful advertiser boycotts of her show amid a bruising campaign against her."
Defending Dr. Laura and America
New attack on Dr. Laura Schlessinger by homosexual activists
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