just out ▼ april 18. 1997 ▼ 21
Continued from page 19
while unfair, is not against the law—a fact one of
the colleagues is shocked to learn. The spot offers
a phone number for the Human Rights Campaign
which viewers can call to get more information.
(Funding for the ad was made possible by a
$225,000 donation from Jessica Stevens, the les
bian CEO of a California high-tech company.)
With 65 ABC affiliates willing to air the spot,
HRC currently plans to place it in 33 markets
across the country.
According to HRC, the ad has been rejected by
affiliates in Chicago, New York, Houston and,
closer to home, Eugene, as well as a handful of
other stations.
The spot has been accepted by, among others,
the Portland affiliate—as well as the relatively
rural enclave of Fargo, N.D.
According to Red Wing, news conferences in
most of the cities where the ad has been placed—
as well as in most of those declining to run it—are
set for April 22 to publicly unveil
spot.
HRC isn’t the only potential ad
vertiser stung by ABC. The net
work also rejected Olivia Cruise
Lines’ request to buy air time,
stating its ad was unfit for
younger viewers.
Though shooting of the
ad had not yet begun, plans
called for the commercial to
show two women kissing
aboard a cruise ship.
Some have called ABC’s
decision to reject the ad “a
double standard,” consider
ing that the network is will-
i ng to broadcast a show about
a lesbian discovering herself.
“ W e’re bew ildered,”
GLAAD national communi
cations director Alan Klein
tells Just Out. “It’s hard to
speculate about what’s go
ing on in their heads.”
The show’s Friends
OuT v/»TV\ tEtteo
“As more gay- and lesbian-themed program
ming begins to air, network executives will have
to take another look at their advertising policies,”
adds NGLTF’s Lobel. ‘They don’t seem to have
a problem running an ad for other cruise lines
with happy straight couples kissing and being
romantic. Aren’t there children watching those
programs, too?
HRC spokesman Davis Smith says ABC’s
rejection of Olivia’s request “calls into serious
question the reason ABC gave the Human Rights
Campaign for rejecting our commercial.
“We had thought our ad was being treated like
all other ‘issue’ advertising. Now we have
reason to believe otherwise,” he says.
ABC’s decisions not with
standing, much of the me
dia coverage surrounding Ellen has been
nonjudgmental, if not favorable. Note this ques
tion presented by the ever-gay-friendly New York
Times columnist Frank Rich in the paper of record’s
April 10 issue: “Am I the only parent who feels
that the straight cruise ship commercials starring
Kathie Lee Gifford are more of a threat to my
kids’ view of heterosexuality than anything a gay
sponsor could come up with?”
In that piece, Rich also highlights how far
culture has come bv recounting the story of Sheila
James Kuehl, “a popu
lar sitcom actress
of the early
’ 6 0 s,
fondly
remembered as Zelda Gilroy, the smart but plain
coed unrequitedly in love with the hero of The
Many Loves o f Dobie Gillis."
He writes: “Speaking this week from Califor
nia, where she is now Speaker Pro tern of the state
Assembly, Ms. Kuehl recalled how, as a closeted
lesbian in her early 20s, she’d been up for her own
spin-off series as Dobie Gillis concluded its run.
“ ‘People were high on it,’ she said. ‘We
thought it would really go. But all of a sudden there
was a great silence, and it sank like a stone. A
couple of weeks later, the director told me that the
president of CBS thought 1 was a little butch. He
didn’t say I was gay, but 1 was completely pan
icked. I’d already been kicked out of my sorority
at UCLA. I thought of killing myself. I thought
they’d tell my parents.... But nothing happened.’
“Nothing, that is,” Rich writes, “except the
rapid demise of her TV career—which would in
turn lead her by a circuitous route to Harvard Law
School and a career as the first openly gay legis
lator elected in the nation’s largest state.”
m
mam
o f Ellen (from left) Joely Fisher, Jeremy Piven, David Anthony Higgins and Clea Lewis circle round the star
C 1997 Mayer Laboratories. Inc
When it feels this good, it’s hard to forget.
Y o u w o n ’t fe e l p le a s u r e like th is w ith a n y o th e r c o n d o m . It’s n o t a ra in c o a t, it’s a K im o n o .
o what happens after the coming
out of Ellen Morgan? Many
speculate that we will see increas
ing depictions of gay and lesbian char
acters on the tube.
“With Ellen, we have more
than a foot in the door.” says
£
HRC’s Red Wing, “we have
I
a whole body there now.”
|
But NGLTF spokesman
Mark F. Johnson cautions:
&
“Maybe we should ask,
‘What happens to [the char-
£
acter] Ellen now that she’s
out?’ We need to let people
know that because she’s out,
she might lose her job, or
her children if she had some,
and she can’t get married....
Yes this is an exciting occa
sion, but we have to do a
reality check.”