BY ROB SALERNO - Yup, I'm still talking about the need for more out-and-proud public figures.

Kris Joseph, an "out, proud, kinky professional actor" (according to his blog) based in Ottawa posted an interesting rant on his blog about the need for gay public figures to be out. Read the whole thing, but this is the best bit:

As adults, we can all make choices about who we associate with, where we work, and how we present ourselves. We can steer clear of bigots, and play the pronoun game in our day-to-day business. What a luxury. Teenagers and kids in schools do not enjoy these freedoms. They can’t choose their school, often; can’t choose their social circles; can’t choose their work environment. A gay kid — or even a kid that is simply perceived as gay — must walk brazenly, every day, through an obstacle course of hatred, fear, and a feeling that They Don’t Fit. On a daily basis, these kids demonstrate a level of courage that some public figures — those who hide their sexuality for the sake of personal advancement — will never know...

Stop telling kids it gets better. Make it better. Hold hands in public. Put your arm around your lover on the bus. Correct people when they assume you’re going home to someone of the opposite gender. Don’t assume Ellen Degeneres and Neil Patrick Harris have the gay role model jobs sewn up.

Kris Joseph (left) in Hamlet's Cat.

Providing the counterpoint, The Irish Independent (which I've been quoting a lot lately) ran one of those "enough with the gay rights talk" columns that sounds like it comes straight out of the 1990s. You know, the ones that are headlined "Loud and proud gays want to take over the rest of society" without a trace of irony.

After opening with the acknowledged cliché "some of my best friends are gay," writer Eamon Delaney goes on to lament that "it seems as if the tables have turned and a minority community -- the gays -- want to increasingly change mainstream culture to suit them."

Then his rant goes on to lament that gays no longer think that civil partnerships are enough and that queer people parenting children can never be as good as a child's natural biological parents, missing the point on both arguments.

Gays don't deserve marriage, he says, because gay magazines are full of ads "endorsing late-night gyms, sex lines and a freewheeling sexual activity which would be dismissed as sleazy in heterosexual culture." You can only enjoy marriage or phone sex, which is why there's no such thing as heterosexual phone-sex lines.

Wait, what's that? Oh, there are? But they don't advertise, do they? Oh, they do? You mean, if I watch Batman: The Animated Series on Teletoon Retro I'll see a phone-sex ad at every commercial break? Well, that just proves my point. If you're watching Batman: TAS at midnight on Teletoon Retro, you're probably never going to date a woman anyway, am I right?

Similarly, gay parents can't ever be as good as a child's natural parents, even if the natural parents are meth-addicted child abusers. Heck, even if one of the gay parents is the child's natural parent, because gay dads can't breast-feed.

Nevermind that most foster parents can't breast-feed or that most foster children are too old to breast-feed or that lesbian birth-moms can breast-feed. 

Oh, and don't even get Delaney started on bisexuals and transgender people. It's not clear what Delaney has against them, but he obviously doesn't like them, or the acronym LGBT much.

All of this, he says, is why the gay community should shut up, lest it create a backlash that erodes the significant gains the gay community has made in recent years to eliminate prejudice and discrimination.

No, Delaney, you are the backlash. Tired tirades like yours are the reason that gay people must be out and loud and proud of who they are, so that people know that gay couples exist, and they have children, and that some children are gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans, and that it's not something you need to freak out about.

On that note, Absolut Vodka is celebrating 30 years of marketing to the gay community. Back in 1981, advertising in gay magazines was considered risky for a major business, but Absolut jumped on it and has been supporting gay causes ever since. Here are two of my favourite cheeky gay Absolut ads:

BY ROB SALERNO - I know I've been writing about whether or not gay public figures ought to come out quite a bit over the last week -- enough to get labelled part of the "It Gets Better Police" by a National Post columnist -- but there've been some updates worth discussing.

On Monday, I wrote about a bar brawl between an Irish footballer and a comedian in a pub in Dublin, which was apparently inspired by the comedian's joke that the footballer might be gay.

After watching the show where Oliver Callan joked that Paul Galvin was "in the closet," I called it "somewhat homophobic" in this space. I'm not humourless, but I found Callan's high-camp portrayal of gay Irish presidential candidate David Norris borderline. 

Well, Callan has a response for everyone who thinks his jokes are homophobic: he's gay himself. 

Rewatching the video knowing that he's gay, I actually thought the camp version of Norris was funnier. I can't really explain why that is -- perhaps because now he's like an insider. Start at the seven-minute mark.

On the other hand, his joke about Galvin being in the closet struck me as a bit of the pot calling the kettle gay.

Callan came out publicly on The Saturday Show last night, saying he didn't think being gay was a big deal and didn't think people should be surprised that he is:

"I'm gay and I don't really give a shit, to be honest," he said, although he does go on to say that he hopes to normalize homosexuality a bit.

So readers, I put it to you: does a comedian being openly gay change how you hear his jokes?

BY ROB SALERNO - Everyone's all abuzz about rants at the CBC today.

This morning CBC broke a story that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford spouted an expletive-laden rant at 911 dispatchers when police didn't arrive quickly enough to remove a sexagenarian comedienne from his driveway.

A few days ago, the CBC's Mary Walsh tried to ambush Ford for a comedy interview at his house for This Hour Has 22 Minutes -- yes, that show still exists. After a brief exchange in which Ford was clearly not amused, he went inside to call the cops. 

It should probably not surprise anyone that 911 didn't treat this as an urgent matter, but Ford called back twice to complain that cops hadn't shown up and that Walsh was still standing in his driveway with her scary camera and microphone. The CBC says a source claimed that on one of his calls, he shouted at the dispatcher, "You
. . . bitches! Don’t you fucking know? I’m Rob fucking Ford, the mayor of this city!" CBC said a tape of the call has been circulating among police.

Ford now admits that he swore, although he says he didn't call anyone names. He says he dropped the F-bomb out of frustration because he was "frightened" after having been "attacked" in his driveway by Walsh, which makes perfect sense, because this is Rob Ford:

and this is Mary Walsh:

Meanwhile, This Hour alum Rick Mercer made waves the other night with his rant on teen suicide during this week's Rick Mercer Report. In the rant, Mercer talks about the rash of teen suicides in Canada -- 300 annually -- and Jamie Hubley's in particular.

"It's no longer enough for us to tell kids who are different that it's gonna get better," he says. "We need to make it better now."

So far, so good.

"Every adult has to step up to the plate, and that's gay adults, too." Uh-huh. "'Cause I know gay cops, athletes, soldiers, cabinet ministers -- a lot of us do, but the problem is adults, we don't need role models. Kids do. So if you're gay and you're in public life, I'm sorry, you don't have to run around with a pride flag and bore the hell out of everyone, but you can't be invisible, not anymore."

*cough* 

I don't want to shit on what Mercer's saying here, but it's a bit of a head scratcher that he doesn't say anywhere in his rant that he's gay. After all, he's a public figure. So why isn't he owning this, especially if he's calling out all those invisible gay cops, athletes, soldiers and John Bairds?

I know Mercer's been out of the closet for about a decade now, he donates to gay charities, and he even recorded an It Gets Better video. But how many people outside of the established gay community even know he's gay? (As the Star reports, the Twitterverse was still largely in the dark.) I agree that Mercer doesn't need to drape himself in the pride flag, but the occasional reference to his sexuality on his TV show -- especially when he's actually talking about sexuality would go a long way.  

It's a very Canadian attitude to not want to impose yourself on others, but that's pretty much what a role model does. Imagine if Wayne Gretzky wanted only his closest friends to know that he was a great hockey player. Imagine if Beyoncé was only a diva behind closed doors. How would either have been role models? Being a role model means putting your whole life out there and saying, "I'm fabulous" for everyone to see and emulate.

So no, you don't need to "run around with a pride flag and bore the hell out of everyone." You could be Anderson Cooper or Oprah or Missy Elliott or John Baird. Or you could be Ellen. Who do you think is a bigger role model for gay kids? (Sorry, those claiming a middle ground don't get to be role models.)

Mercer apparently told The Current that he doesn't include his sexuality on his show because that's not what it's about. *ahem* Rick Mercer, if you're reading, it's called The Rick Mercer Report. It's about you. It's about your worldview and your perspective, and being a gay man informs that. You can make it part of the show if you choose to.

The Daily Show isn't about Jon Stewart's sex life, but he still manages to mention his wife and kids every now and then. The Ellen Show isn't explicitly about cunnilingus, but Ellen still manages to mention her sexuality every now and then.

Ultimately, I agree with everything Mercer says in his rant this week. But if he's going to call out others to accept the responsibility of being a role model, he should make more than rudimentary effort to be one himself.

On Oct 25, Brazil’s top court ruled that same-sex couples are allowed to legally marry. In May 2011, Brazil's Supreme Court ruled that civil unions should be recognized but stopped short at extending full marriage benefits to homosexual couples.

After the ruling, several couples petitioned to have their civil unions recognized as full marriages. Some of the petitions were approved by the lower courts; others were not.

According to AP, the Supreme Appeals Court ruled in a 4-1 vote that the Constitution “makes it possible for stable civil unions to become marriages.”

Now Denmark is poised to become the eighth country in Europe to give gays and lesbians full marital rights.

In 2012 the government will introduce a bill that will allow gays to get married in the Church of Denmark. The coalition government’s church minister, Manu Sareen, proposed the marriage deal.

Sareen says he is looking forward to the “moment when the first homosexual couple steps out of the church. I’ll be standing out there throwing rice.”

BY ROB SALERNO -