DARK SHADOWS and this generation's civil rights movement

Last week, the Supreme Court struck down a 1996 law blocking federal recognition of gay marriage, as well as allowing gay marriage to resume in California by declining to decide a related case.
It's not an issue I'd planned to discuss here. Mostly, I'm a little worried about presenting myself as the Ambassador of Heterosexuality to the gay community, which saw a modest rise in its property values following last week's Supreme Court ruling. It's not that I don't want to show my support; I just don't want to look like a jackass and undermine everyone's efforts.

To put it another way: I don't want to look like the QUENTIN TARANTINO of homosexuality. "Hey everyone! Look how open minded I am! I even wore my David Bowie t-shirt! That's a gay thing, right?" It's better to remain quiet and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.

Just because he's a great filmmaker doesn't mean he's not a douche. See also: Alfred Hitchcock.

Last week's Supreme Court ruling was a moment certainly worth celebrating, but it hardly marks the end of the battle for acceptance in America. When my hometown of Columbia, S.C., can muster support for a spontaneous gay rights parade, it's evidence that the country is headed in the right direction. But we also need to keep in mind that you can still be legally fired for being gay in most U.S. states.

Pragmatism was also a factor in my early decision not to address the DOMA ruling. This is an entertainment site, after all. Why drag politics into it? The answer to that question is at the very Roughly 1/4 of them were gay ... and none of them lived long enough to see last week's SCOTUS ruling. For them, this wasn't "politics." It was their lives.

And that's not counting the actors absent from the photo, or who joined the cast in the years after the image was taken. Trying to keep track of which actors were gay or straight (or, in Grayson's Hall's case, straight but very nearly typecast as gay) is a fool's errand. And remember, those actors weren't only obliged to keep parts of their personality secret; many of them had to outright lie about it. Even LOUIS EDMONDS, a man so flamboyant that there wasn't a closet big enough to hide his sexuality, was expected to keep his personal life segregated from his career.

YOUR HAPPINESS IS TEARING THIS NATION APART!

Some of us like to keep home and work separated, but that choice has rarely been available to gay men and women. This kind of pressure has been known to devastate relationships. Nobody wants to be a part of someone's life that has to be shrouded in lies. If you doubt this, ask your significant other how they'd feel if you started to deny that they exist.

I'm not going to turn this into a KENNETH ANGER gossip piece. If you want to know who was gay in DARK SHADOWS, Google will help you. Keep in mind that not all of those answers will be true. And besides, who gives a shit? I've got no more interest in who Louis Edmonds was sleeping with than I do about who was bunking with that stuntman who played the werewolf. A television show is not a cooperative that you buy into, and the people involved owe you nothing. They're not even obliged to be nice to you when you bump into them at the deli.

We also ask that you not combine your Google search with the words "Claus," "von" or "Bülow." ZING!

The politics behind "coming out" are tangled and nebulous, and not something I've had to devote a lot of time thinking about. Which is selfish, I admit, but the world is riddled with problems and I'm equipped to deal with hardly any of them. I certainly understand why people choose to stay in the closet. When you're out, your sexuality has a way of eclipsing all other aspects of your life. For many people, the word "gay" is a ledge they haven't quite figured out how to climb. And it's not even a very tall ledge, as far as differences go. It's not like you have to learn a new language or anything.

Although "McKellen" is the native language of ComicCon.

This is the reason so many artists are hesitant to discuss their sexuality. A gay actor is gay first, and an actor second. Audiences will readily accept that Zachary Quinto, a human being from Pittsburgh, as a half-alien science officer serving on a spaceship that routinely breaks the laws of physics. But, as a heterosexual man in a romantic comedy? That's just too far fetched. I mean, everyone knows he's got the gay ... how can we believe he's attracted to Jessica Alba or whoever?

So yeah, being gay is socially complicated and requires you to be patient with stupid people (some of who are also gay.)  I can't claim to know where many of these lines are drawn, which is why I tread carefully. But that's not the same thing as backing away from a fight. THE COLLINSPORT HISTORICAL SOCIETY is an entertainment site, but I refuse to keep my mouth shut about social inequities just because it makes my life easier.

This doesn't take heroism on my part, because I've been given a choice that so many others have been denied.

- Wallace McBride

(NOTE: Minutes after this column went live, I got my first nasty response: "I am getting tired of this junk being shoved down our throats." Naturally, this bit of wisdom was shared by someone posting anonymously. If you've got something to say, man up and identify yourself. If it's not important enough to sign, it's not important enough to share.)