Posted on 05/21/2014 5:15:40 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
For the second time today, an interview with The New York Times has exposed what appears to be a decades-old instance of celebrity homophobia. First, in a TimesTalks discussion, John Cameron Mitchell revealed how David Letterman refused to shake his hand after a performance of Hedwig and Angry Inch more than 15 years ago. Now, playwright Larry Kramer is charging Barbara Streisand with saying she finds gay sex “distasteful.”
Kramer has been trying to get his play The Normal Heart made into a movie since it first appeared Off-Broadway in 1985. The story of one activist’s fight during the rise of the HIV/AIDS crisis will finally make its film debut this Sunday in an HBO production starring Mark Ruffalo, Julia Roberts and others.
Streisand initially bought the film rights for the play all the way back in 1986, but struggled to get the financing the actually produce it. Eventually, Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee and American Horror Story, purchased the rights and produced the HBO version.
In a new interview with the Times’ Patrick Healy, Kramer reveals that Streisand found some of the subject matter in the story uncomfortable, despite her role as an icon in the gay community.
“I said, ‘I really think it’s important that after eons of watching men and women make love in the movies, it’s time to see two men do so,’” Kramer told Healy. “I bought her a book of very beautiful art pictures of two men making love, and she found it very distasteful.”
In a statement responding to Kramer’s charge, Streisand said she decided to option the play “to promote the idea of everyone’s right to love. Gay or straight!”
“Larry was at the forefront of this battle and, God love him, he’s still fighting,” she said. “But there’s no need to fight me by misrepresenting my feelings. As a filmmaker, I have always looked for new and exciting ways to do love scenes, whether they’re about heterosexuals or homosexuals. It’s a matter of taste, not gender.”
Unlike Streisand, Murphy decided to use his own money to finance the film, something Kramer said “shows how much he wanted to do this, and how tacky it sort of is that Barbra never would think of something like that.”
Read the full article, which will appear in this Sunday’s Arts & Leisure section of the paper at nytimes.com.
And watch a trailer for The Normal Heart below, via HBO:
Probably not too keen on bestiality, either.
Isn’t her son a gay man infected with AIDS? Or am I thinking about someone else?
Wow...hell must have froze over...I agree with BS...
When the left calls us teabaggers I’m confused.
I thought they were ok with homo sex?
there’s nothing at all attractive, or good for that matter, about sodomy. period.
Barbie doesn’t want to lose her shirt producing a movie that most people don’t want to see. Simple as that.
“I bought her a book of very beautiful art pictures of two men making love, and she found it very distasteful.”
Streisand and I finally agree on something. I might use stronger terms however.
So many of them it's hard to keep track of.
not entirely, she still is pro-gay. she just doesn’t want to see it, but she won’t stop being pro-gay. she is a hypocritical liberal. don’t let reality change my pc views.
Babs hates fags. Isn’t that career suicide in Hollyweird?
Yentl, arguably her greatest film, took a strong Judeo-Christian view of the sanctity of marriage.
Women consider anal sex to be degrading as it is a form of domination. Oral sex on a male has the same connotation.
I think that the is the biggest issue between most center-conservatives and “the Pink Mafia.”
If someone is homosexual, it’s their right, but they should be circumspect about flaunting their sexuality, just as the center-conservatives tend to be circumspect about their heterosexuality.
They demand that we not only tolerate their behavior, but they want us to “celebrate it” with them, and as such, turn nearly everyone off because of their radical agenda.
Mark
She’s another hypocrite. She knows she sells out to the gay crowds at her concerts, they love and adore her. She takes their money while finding what they do distastefull. I wonder how long it is going to be for the gay boycott of Babs...
speaking of movies most don’t want to see, Brokeback Mountain broke some new ground in male/male intimacy. But we haven’t seen any major movies with such a plot line since. Could it be that people, even if they want to be liberal about gay issues, don’t want to see it in entertainment???
Such a thing does not exist. This "book" is no more art than would be any other perversion rendered in drawing -- humans copulating with animals, for example. Adults abusing children.
Normal people cringe and are repelled at the very idea of two men touching one another sexually; it is human nature, and all the politically correct repression in the world will not change that.
I refuse to get HBO, and I've never seen "Game of Thrones," but South Park did an episode based on GoT, and it featured the author of the series, and everything he would speak or write about had to do with "wieners."
Mark
I find any thread title that has the terms ‘Barbra Streissand’ and ‘sex’ in it to be very very distasteful.
Not only that, I’d like to attach a polygraph to all homo-loving, heterosexual libs and ask them a question: would you want you children to be homosexual or heterosexual? Then I’d ask them that if they knew their unborn child was going to be a homosexual, would they have it aborted? The results would be very interesting.
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