I’ve recently read an old sci-fi story that appeared in an early issue of “Playboy” about a future where heterosexuality was outlawed. “The Crooked Man”. I doubt many people read it on their way to the centerfold.
It was meant to be a pro gay parable of course but it didn’t come off that way to me.
Hey make a movie about an obscure state Senator with a weird name who gets his butt kicked in a US House primary and then is somehow elected President 8 short years later due to becoming the political equivalent of an American idol winner. Truth is stranger than fiction. Zero people on the planet could have told you in 2001 that Bush’s successor would be Barack Obama. Even he, a man who had fantasied of being President since childhood, couldn’t have told you that.
I remember an episode of “House” circa 2005 about a Black US Senator POTUS candidate (mistakenly) thought to have AIDS. He steadfastly denies he’s gay. House said “Some day there will be a black president. Some day there will be a gay president. Maybe there will even be a gay, black president.”
Little did I know it was prophecy.
There's an early 1970s movie called "The Man", starring James Earl Jones as the first black President. Since it was considered nearly impossible a black guy would be elected President outright, the premise is he's Senate Pro Temp and suddenly becomes President due to a freak accident where the President, veep, and Speaker are all killed at once. The movie was written by Rod Serling of The Twilight Zone fame. I've never seen it.
Speaking of Rod Serling, what's going on now with gay marriage is at least a perfect fit for one of those "terrifying" 50s Twilight Zone episodes where people wake up one day and find society completely switched around. You can practically picture Serling stepping in from behind the curtain and go "Imagine a world where two men of the same gender getting married is normal, and you are abnormal for opposing it. Impossible? Perhaps in our world it is. But not here, in The Twilight Zone" And you know what? It would be a perfect Twilight Zone episode except the 50s era censors probably wouldn't allow such a storyline and reject it for being too gross and shocking.
>> Little did I know it was prophecy. <<
Two films that nailed future political reality were "First Monday in October", about a Sandra Day O'Connor type judge who is nominated by a conservative Republican president and becomes the first female justice ever on the U.S. Supreme Court (which was filmed about a year before Reagan nominated her!) and 1968's "Shoes of the Fisherman", which is set in the 1980s and about a slavic Cardinal from eastern Europe (who was a political prisoner under Soviet occupation). During the papal conclave, there is a deadlock between liberal and conservative Italian candidates, and he is a dark horse elected as a compromise candidate, becoming the first non-Italian Pope is over 450 years. The new Pope refuses to wear the papal tiara so he can make the papacy more accessible to the people. A decade later, John Paul II's election fit the story to the tee, except he was Polish instead of Ukrainian and took the name JPII instead of "Pope Kiril"