`Humpday’ explores intimacy of male friendship

(Los Angeles) The mumblecore genre goes adult in more ways than one with “Humpday,” a comedy about a couple of longtime buddies – both straight men – who decide to make a gay porn film together.

Writer-director Lynn Shelton has said she’d prefer not to have her third feature classified as …

They hugged! Lesbians expelled from high school

Back in my day, you had to wake up pretty early to get expelled from high school. You had to rise at the crack of dawn and sell drugs to the children of well-connected bankers and lawyers. You had to trudge a mile in the snow to flip off a teacher (like, repeatedly). You had to make some kind of threat, like: I’m going to blow up this stupid school. I think maybe you could also get expelled for wearing shorts above the knee. Such are the baffling, inexplicable rules of high school expulsion.

But even in my conservative Texas high school, you could not be expelled for being a lesbian. Far less for exhibiting “a bond of intimacy” that was “characteristic of a lesbian relationship” — which, by the way, sounds like approximately 86 percent of female friendships. But such was the case in California, where two 16-year-old girls were expelled for “conducting themselves in a manner consistent with being lesbians.” An appeals court recently ruled that “the private religious school was not a business and therefore did not have to comply with a state law that prohibits businesses from discriminating,” according to a story in today’s L.A. Times.

The Times story recounts the twisty tale that led a teacher (tipped off by a student) to probe the terrifying waters of MySpace, where she found such incendiary evidence as the fact that one of the students identified as a bisexual. There was also a photo of the two girls hugging. (Hugging?!?! Shouldn’t you get some kind of merit badge for that?) Seriously, the story is worth a read. At one point, the principal seems to be coming on to one girl. The tables keep turning. It’s like “Doubt” or something.

So, OK: It’s a private school that wants to uphold a certain religious ethos. (The school is associated with the same religious denomination as Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann. ) Should they be allowed to discriminate based on their shame-based ethos? I’ll leave that for the courts to decide. (A lawyer for the girls hopes to take the case to the California Supreme Court.) But at a time when our school system is so embattled — fingers crossed, economic stimulus plan — and at an age when kids are discovering themselves and in the very place you might hope adults would be trying to sheperd them into an adult world, it’s just a damn shame that a school would spend its valuable resources on this kind of witch hunt.

― Sarah Hepola See They hugged! Lesbians expelled from high school

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Italian TV Transforms Brokeback Mountain into a straight tale of friendship

Italians tuning in to their state TV network this week had a rare chance to see Brokeback Mountain, the tale of true friendship between two straight cowboys.
At least that was the version of Ang Lee’s gay cowboy Oscar-winner that was broadcast by channel Rai Due: two love scenes between the male protagonists had been excised, cuts which provoked furious accusations from gay-rights groups of censorship driven by creeping homophobia in Italy.

“The need to change a film about homosexual love into a film about simple male friendship says a lot about the current cultural climate,” said Franco Grillini, president of Gaynet.

La Repubblica noted that the cuts – involving a kiss between actors Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and a love scene in a tent – came days after the Vatican attacked a European Union proposal that the United Nations formally condemn discrimination against gays.

But Rai yesterday claimed the cuts were an honest mistake and promised to broadcast the full version of the 2005 film. “Since it went out after the watershed we could have shown the full version but did not have the copy,” said Rai director general Claudio Cappon. The copy broadcast, Rai said, had been supplied by a distributor for use before the watershed.

Opposition senator Luigi Vimercati called the explanation “embarrassing” and said he would demand a parliamentary inquiry.

Critics noted that while the gay love scenes were removed, censors left a heterosexual sex scene in Monday night’s version. “Evidently it is not sex which creates fear and pain, but the feelings between two men,” said Grillini.

See Italian TV Transforms Brokeback Mountain into a straight tale of friendship