In and Out and In. That describes the back and forth of the Hallmark Channel. They bent to pressure from the viciously anti-gay One Million Moms, with a membership nowhere near that. They stopped airing an ad featuring two women getting married. The Million Moms don’t actually have much of a following (and they are a subsidiary of a hate group). The backlash from the gay community and their allies was huge, and Hallmark backed off, restoring the ad. Great publicity for the two women who acted in the ad, is the photo of them has been all over. While Hallmark has relegated gay people primarily to positions of assistant or best friend of the lead character, women do tend to be more supportive of gay rights, something they were forced to realize rather brutally. This is a good first step, but if they really want to apologize, how about a gay couple falling in love at Christmas?
Lifetime actually beat them to the punch with Twinkle All the Way. While the movie is not focused on the gay couple, Brian Sills’ character Lex Harrison and husband Danny (Mark Ghanimé), they do get the final kiss at the end of the movie. Netflix’s Let it Snow also features a queer romance.
Clint Eastwood is a brilliant director who did wonders with the film Sully. He is very much an actor’s director, getting great performances out of them. He is also a right wing nutball and has made the top 10 Misogynists in Hollywood lists. That might explain why so many are boycotting his latest film, Richard Jewell.
In it, they portray Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs (played by Olivia Wilde), who was the first journalist to report that Jewell had become the focus of an FBI investigation of the bombing. It depicts her as sleeping with an FBI agent to get information for her story. It is something that they made up and is very defaming to Scruggs, who people who know her say she would never do something that unethical to get a story. It is made worse by the fact that Scruggs is no longer with us to defend herself.