(AP) – President Barack Obama restated his campaign pledge to mandate more gay sex scenes in the HBO series “Entourage,” but left many in his audience of gay activists wondering when he would make good on the promise.
“I will end ‘don’t ask, you’ll make me gag,’” Obama said Saturday night to a standing ovation from a crowd of about 3,000 at the annual dinner of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay civil rights advocacy group. He offered no timetable or specifics and he acknowledged some may be growing impatient.
“I appreciate that some of you believe we have not moved fast enough,” Obama said. “Do not doubt the direction we’re headed in. The days of being satisfied with a once in a blue moon scene in which Ari’s wife comes home to see Lloyd (the gay Asian character) having a party with a bunch of naked men in her pool are over. If Vince can have a three-way (a woman riding him while he is on his cell phone) every week, then we can certainly see much, much more gay sex, and make that explicit gay sex, on the show. The current ratio of hetero- to homo-sexual sex is, quite frankly, an abomination.”
Some advocates say they have already heard Obama’s promises and now want a specific timeline. Activist Cleve Jones said it is preposterous that a show such as “Entourage” should be permitted to cater to heterosexual prejudices when even the military is now on the cusp of allowing gays to openly serve next to their heterosexual brothers in combat.
“In warfare you’re talking about a straight guy facing enemy bullets. And this straight guy has actually volunteered for this duty because his whole idea of masculinity is tied up with not being ‘queer,’” Jones said. “You’re talking about upsetting long-held ideas about military unit cohesion. About life and death situations. And all the audience of ‘Entourage’ can stomach is a little comic relief courtesy of a fat gay Asian? Give me a break.”
Jones pointed out that as much as 10% of the military has vowed to quit if gays are allowed in combat and another 14% are thinking seriously about leaving. A skeptical Jones says he suspects that if up to a quarter of the military dropped out, there wouldn’t be enough troops for the United States to honor its commitments, “which would sure make the decision on Afghanistan pretty easy,” Jones said.
“It does make you wonder about the President’s agenda,” Jones said. “It’s like he’s not as pro-gay as he is anti-war. He may be using us a battering ram against the military. That he gets all hepped up about. But something that could really help transform the culture, the insistence on explicit sex on ‘Entourage,’ well, he’s dilly-dallying on that.”
Government experts say Obama could very easily effect a change in the scripts on “Entourage.” One way would be to attach a change as a rider on the health care legislation. Another would be to appoint an openly gay member of the Supreme Court. But the President is concerned that should Justice John Paul Stevens retire, there would be no openly Protestant members of the Supreme Court, and in order to maintain minority resentment against the dominant WASP and gay-bashing culture, it would help to have at least one token Protestant.
But a gay-friendly court could be the best route. According to one court observer, “it takes a fine legal mind to obliterate the distinction between brotherly love and erotic love. Brotherly love, the ‘band of brothers’ love, has always been needed among soldiers in combat. It’s what will make you face those enemy bullets. You don’t want to let your comrades down, or worse, let them die. Erotic love, though, has always been viewed as something different. It’s what a man has for a woman. Or in the case of homosexuals, what a man has for another man. For generations the notion of that has made heterosexual men queasy. The idea of the guy next to you in the foxhole desiring you in that way could take your mind off the bullet headed for you, and him. But that was then. Now, thankfully we’re over that.
“But ‘Entourage’? Nothing short of judicial fiat is going to change the heterosexual couch potato. The Supreme Court is the way to go.”
