Once and for all: Tinky Winky was not gay!

PinkNews: An actress who portrayed the Teletubby Laa-Laa has said the children’s programme did not contain gay undertones.

The show came in for long-running controversy over suggestions it was promoting homosexuality to children. through the purple character of Tinky Winky.

Nikky Smedley, who portrayed Laa-Laa in the show from 1997, said: “When the show was explained to me, I thought it was a work of genius.

“I thought it will be massive. It came from a place of love and engagement for young children.

“It is fantastic that somewhere in the world a child will be looking at Laa-Laa and laughing.”

But of questions over Tinky Winky’s sexuality, she told the Birmingham Mail: “I think it’s embarrassing for the people who said it.

“What kind of person can take the obvious innocence and turn it into something else? We were hardly sexual beings.”

The late US preacher Jerry Falwell prompted a worldwide debate over the sexuality of Tinky Winky in 1999.

He claimed that Tinky Winky must be gay because he was purple and had a triangle on his head; symbols of gay pride. A bag the character carried also prompted questions, perceived as it was to be a women’s accessory. The BBC said: “Tinky Winky is simply a sweet, technological baby with a magic bag.”

In 2007, Polish politician Eva Sowinska said she would ask psychologists to investigate whether the purse-carrying character was gay and promoted homosexuality to children. Her office later dropped the issue.

We knew that

PinkNews: Jim Parsons, who is best known for playing Sheldon Cooper in the US sitcom ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ has been described as gay and in a 10-year relationship in a profile for the New York Times.

The revelation was quietly added towards the end of the article, discussing Mr Parsons’ appearance as a gay man in the Broadway play, ‘The Normal Heart.’

Mr Parsons, whose performance in ‘The Big Bang Theory’ has won him several awards, including two Emmys and a Golden Globe, has been quiet about his private life. He has yet to reveal the identity of his partner, though most of the fans of the show believe that the latter’s name is, Todd Spiewak, with whom he is regularly photographed, and whom he usually thanks when accepting awards.

While his privacy has been praised by some, others, such as Michael Musto for Out magazine, want him, and others like him, to come out loud and proud, calling it “the honourable — and sensible — thing to do.”

DC plans to bring a prominent character out of the closet

 io9: DC Comics’ New 52 has brought plenty of changes to its superpowered characters, but the publisher’s policy has been not to change the sexual orientations of any existing characters. That’s about to change, however, as DC co-publisher Dan DiDio announces plans to reintroduce an established character as gay.Last year, DiDio told The Advocate that DC’s plans were to introduce new gay characters rather than change the orientation of established characters. However, when asked about that policy at this weekend’s Kapow! convention in London, DiDio said that plans had changed, and that a previously established DC character would be introduced in the New 52 universe as gay. DiDio told the audience that the character would become “one of our most prominent gay characters.”

The question is: who will it be? It sounds like the character will be one who hasn’t yet appeared in the New 52 (so that image above probably won’t pan out). Will anyone’s slashfic dreams pan out? And will the newly homosexual character be a hero or a villain?

That didn’t last long

 

PinkNews: Romney’s openly gay spokesperson resigns due to anti-gay backlash

Richard Grenell, the openly gay man who was appointed as the security and foreign policy spokesperson by Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, has resigned from his position, due to fierce opposition from anti-gay conservatives, the Washington Post reports.

Batman is Very, Very Gay

Playboy: Batman megawriter (Batman, Batman & Robin, Batman Inc.,) Grant Morrison explains what makes Batman tick in Playboy magazine. The secret? “Batman is very, very gay.”

“I got interested in the class element of Batman: He’s a rich man who beats up poor people. It’s quite a bizarre mission to go out at night dressed as a bat and punch the hell out of junkies. And then he goes home and lives in this mansion. There’s an aspirational quality to him—he’s an outlaw and he can buy anything. He has a new Batmobile every movie. He’s very plutonian in the sense that he’s wealthy and also in the sense that he’s sexually deviant.

Gayness is built into Batman. I’m not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There’s just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he’s intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay. I think that’s why people like it. All these women fancy him and they all wear fetish clothes and jump around rooftops to get to him. He doesn’t care—he’s more interested in hanging out with the old guy and the kid.”