As controversies over gay rights and equal opportunities have been popping up in various media lately—ranging from federal recognition of same-sex marriage to getting rid of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy—so it goes with the mainstream cultural aspects of homosexuality, and, by extension, the evolution of gay porn.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, in its third annual Network Responsibility Index, scored HBO as the highest among 15 networks for its representation of scripted gay characters. And former porn actor Michael Lucas, who now runs a top gay porn production company, Lucas Entertainment, has released a new film, Men of Israel, the first gay porn film to feature an all-Jewish cast.
Wayne Hoffman writes in Tablet magazine that, in gay porn, “Openly Jewish men have been virtually absent or invisible. In fact, the only one in recent memory is, well, Michael Lucas. That’s not to say that there haven’t been Jewish guys in gay films. Just two years ago, for instance, Dror Barak made it big as a hirsute hunk making movies for Raging Stallion Studios, but Barak—who worked for the Israeli consulate in New York until news of his other career broke—performed under the name Roman Ragazzi.”
Following in the heterosexual footsteps of last year’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno—twice rated NC-17 until it got an R rating on appeal—favorable reviews resulted from the release this year of another movie rated R, Humpday. Dana Stevens, film critic for the online publication Slate, writes that it “may not be the single best movie I’ve seen so far this year—though it’s certainly a contender for the title—but it’s without doubt the most surprising.”
Humpday is about a couple of straight male friends who had been college buddies. Now, at a party hosted by a lesbian couple, after a few bong hits and glasses of wine, their discussion turns to an amateur porn film festival called Humpfest. This is an event that actually exists, promoted by The Stranger, an alternative weekly in Seattle.
Cybersocket, a web magazine which describes itself as “the leader in gay & lesbian online information,” reports that “Nowhere has the allure of straight men been more apparent than in the adult industry. Some of the most successful adult websites and Video On Demand titles … build on the premise that money can turn straight men gay by allowing them to separate sexual identity from their individual sexual acts. The willingness of so many ‘straight’ men to engage in homosexual behavior adds another layer of mystery to the conversation. If boys are willing to suck and fuck one another—for whatever reason—are they truly straight?”
Mike Schwartz—Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn’s chief of staff—gave this bizarre warning about porn and homosexuality at the Voter Values Summit: “All pornography is homosexual pornography, because all pornography turns your sexual drive inwards. Now think about that. And if you tell an 11-year-old boy about that, do you think he’s going to want to go out and get a copy of Playboy? I’m pretty sure he’ll lose interest. That’s the last thing he wants.”
I asked psychologist Charles Silverstein for an incisive analysis of that utterly absurd concept. He was founding editor of the Journal of Homosexuality and is the author of several books, including The Joy of Gay Sex.
“It’s hard to know how to make a serious response to an idiotic statement, but I’ll try,” he told me. “One gets the impression that Schwartz is attacking both pornography and homosexuality. But he’s doing more than that. His core belief is that all sexuality is dangerous and should be controlled by society. It is sexual desire that frightens him. Unfortunately there are many people who agree with him, modern reincarnations of the Inquisition. He represents a regressive movement that wants to take American society back in time when homosexuality was considered both sin and sickness. So was masturbation, which he is also complaining about.
“He and others like him ignore the 1973 statement by the American Psychiatric Association stating that homosexuality is not a mental disorder. But the status of homosexuality isn’t central to his rather poorly informed argument. His thinking about causation is as liberated as that of the judges in Salem Colony when they identified some women as witches. The ‘witches’ were executed, and I suspect that Schwartz and those who support him would judge and punish us (meaning homosexuals, heterosexuals and any 11-year-old boys experimenting with sex) if they got a chance. Fortunately there are saner and more enlightened people in our country.”
Dr. Silverstein had met my challenge.
Paul Krassner is the author of Who’s to Say What’s Obscene? Check out his C-Span appearance here.
This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of AVN.
