Timing Is Everything

Jennifer Beals, one of the stars of Showtime's lesbian drama The L Word, has decided, since her show is about to have its second-season premiere this Sunday, to speak out in favor of gay marriage:

"I'm always shocked that gay marriage is such a big deal. You have to realize how precious human life is, when there are tsunamis and mudslides, when there are armies and terrorists - at any moment, you could be gone, and potentially in the most brutal fashion. And then you have to realize that love is truly one of the most extraordinary things you can experience in your life. To begrudge someone else their love of another person because of gender seems to be absolutely absurd. It's based in fear, fear of the other, fear of what is not like you.

OK, hang on there, Jenn. We've gone over this. The phrase "gay marriage" is an oxymoron. Marriage, by definition for thousands of years, is the joining of a man and a woman. Not a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. It's the word, not the joining.

Fear? There are gay couples that are out there, and I have no fear of them. What two men or two women decide to do in the privacy of their own home, car, or hotel room, is none of my business, just as my privacy is my own. Everyone should be different from everyone else. That's what makes us unique.

But when you are able to see lives on a day-to-day basis, rather than reducing it to politics, then it humanizes a whole community of people that were otherwise invisible."

Invisible? Will & Grace, The L Word, countless characters on countless shows.... what is this invisible crap?

Yale-educated Beals credits popular culture, such as her TV show, with breaking down homosexual stereotypes as it enables "people to see another side of life".

Oh, so her comments mean something because she's from Yale. Well, excuse the hell out of me.

I guess she felt her show needed that extra boost of publicity.