How would we be able to live without celebrities?  Sure, gay and lesbian people could fight for their rights through boring old politics but it's so much cooler when actors do it for us! 

Why, just this week, George Clooney, Drew Barrymore, Alec Baldwin, Charlize Theron, Matchbox 20 singer Rob Thomas all made some noise on our behalf against those "protecting the sanctity of marriage" but not, apparently, the sanctity of spelling.

Ultimately, though, we have to be our own heroes. Let the deep, rich voice of George Takei explain why:

Takei co-starred on the TV show 'Heroes' with Zachary Quinto, who took part in an art piece that splashed him with...umm...milk:

If your mind wandered into the same gutter as mine there, you might be interested in some Craigslist data that uncovered which US cities have the most tops and bottoms:

I'd want a rail pass between New York and Houston 'cause I'm versatile but my real hero is the Nivea for Men shower gel guy -- he taught me how to shave!

But if the city you're visiting tonight is Toronto (*cough*bottoms*cough*), you could swing by Fly nightclub at 8 for the book launch of 'Queeroes,' the first novel from former fab editor Steven Bereznai. 

A queer take on, yes, 'Heroes,' it features a group of gay teens whose sudden new superheroes do little to help them with their high-school love lives!  You can order the book from his site or, better yet, see him in person and ask him what his mutant power is.  He just might tell you!

So have a great weekend -- I leave you with today's theme song:

After the California Supreme Court voted yesterday to uphold the ban on same-sex marriage, police in San Francisco arrested 175 people for disrupting daily society.  The police were relieved, however, that the protesters didn't also marry each other, as that would have completely destroyed society!

There were protests all over America but here in Vancouver and Toronto as well:

Yes, the court ruling is depressing but the fact that California now has 18,000 married gay couples living alongside hundreds of thousands more who can't plainly shows everyone how ridiculous and untenable this ban is.  US President Matt Coles stepped forward to address the nation on the need for equal marriage:

What's that?  Coles isn't the US president?  Barack Obama is?  Oh, well what did he say?

Oh Obama, the silence -- it burns, it burns!  Fortunately, queer people have always been good at taking matters into our own hands, so the campaign for a new vote has already begun:

What kills me about this whole debate is its astonishing one-sidedness:  the anti-gay-marriage argument is based on fear, abstract notions of "the family" and contradictory religious texts, while the pro-gay-marriage argument is based on fairness, everyday practicality and love. I can't see how anyone could argue the logic and fair play in this New York ad:

And, of course, we've got pop culture firmly on our side -- there's the flamboyant 'American Idol' singer, a kinda-creepy Indian Microsoft commerical and even ordinary shows remixed to be more gay on YouTube. The gays are everywhere and who could hate same-sex marriage after watching Kevin propose on 'Brothers & Sisters'?

And all this talk about gay marriage distracts us from talking about the real questions:

Does the Ontario government need to give $23 million to the studio making Elton John's movie when he's probably got that much behind one of his sofa cushions?

Is there really a Catholic archbishop willing to stand up to the Vatican??

And what the hell is this thing???

By the time you read this today, America may be on fire, with blood running in the streets.  At least that's what blogger Sara Robinson suggests as the California Supreme Court rules today at 10am on whether or not to keep the Prop 8 ban on gay marriage:

"...if Prop 8 is overturned by the courts, the backlash from the right is likely to be far more ferocious and intense than anybody on the left reckons right now."

I fear she's probably right -- while gay people are the ones getting basic human rights stripped from us, conservatives cry oppression.  If the Supreme Court rules in our favour today, based on the US Constitution and legal precedent, you'll be hearing shrieks about "liberal activist judges" more than you ever imagined possible before.

As columnist Jonathan Rauch says in an insightful interview, "gay people are the canary in the mine shaft where civil liberties are concerned. First the gays, then.."

Then....women.  I hate to get all Gloria Steinem on you but it always comes down to women -- gay men are hated for the perception that we are like women or choose to be like them. The ban on gay marriage, says the unusually honest right-wing nut Sam Schulman, is simply a necessary part of keeping women in line:

"This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood–and sexual accessibility–is defined.'

That's right, this Thursday is Ladies' Night!  Free chastity belts to the first fifty women! Schulman continues:

"This most profound aspect of marriage--protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex--is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage."

So there!  Argument over, fags!  And to think Schulman does all this before he starts talking about how it's actually his mother he loves.  Canaries in the mine shaft, indeed!

Ouch!  'Terminator Salvation' only made roughly half of what 'Star Trek' or 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine' did on their opening weekends (was it something I said?). 

The real tragedy, however, lies in Arnold Schwarzenegger's real-life role as Governor of California.  That state is broke.  I don't mean Brian-Mulroney-broke, I mean broke-broke!  

Among the budgets Schwarzenegger's slashing is $96 million for AIDS funding, a state program that helps 35,000 people.  Sure, people make killer robot jokes about him, but I'm beginning to think Schwarzenegger's office looks more like this: 

I began training this weekend (142 km!) for the Toronto People With AIDS Foundation Friends for Life Bike Rally (hint! hint!) but I fear I'm less Lance Armstrong and more Liza Minelli.  Sigh.

Still, it's got to be done -- what would happen if our Harper government started taking budget tips from the Terminator?

True, no one going into the new 'Terminator' movie expects to see Christian Bale's penis (though we still live in hope) but among the many reasons to be disappointed by the latest sequel (and sadly there are many!), the film's lack of nudity is oddly a problem.

The first movie, back in 1984, startled audiences by fully presenting Arnold Schwarzenegger's massive Mr. Olympia body (he arrives about four minutes into this clip):

Obviously, director James Cameron wasn't about to give us the full swarzenmonty here but there's a casualness to this nude murder scene that's creepy and still memorable.

Not so in the new movie, in which Sam Worthington arrives apparently naked but covered in thick mud and what seems like a jockstrap. It's not that I couldn't tell but that I even wondered at all that is the problem -- it's a distraction from the story:

There's a similar issue later in the film, as the camera strives not to show an actor's junk but in avoiding the naked body they're telling us is naked, the filmmakers just annoy the audience.  If the character's supposed to be nude, then just show him nude and move on.  Trying to film around "the problem" just starts to look silly:

To be fair, 'Terminator Salvation' is a PG film and director McG cut a nude scene with Moon Bloodgood, even after asking a convention crowd, "Do you want to see Moon’s boobs in the picture?"  But I'd place solid money that he didn't ask the crowd what bits of Bale they'd like to see. The double standard between male and female nudity in film has been around forever because, University of Toronto philosophy professor Mark Kingwell once explained:

"Guys don't like to see penises in film, because they are either too small (in travel mode) and therefore not worth all the fuss, or too big (in action mode) and so threatening to self-esteem."

But this double standard isn't just perpetrated by men -- even women agree, as one student journalist wrote:

"My first reaction when I see full frontal? Laughing...an uncomfortable response to something I don’t know how to handle." 

It got old fast but Snyder explains that he did what he had to do for Doctor Manhattan's character: "I felt like I would have sold out if I'd put some pants on him."

And then there's Judd Apatow who announced, "America fears the penis, and that's something I'm going to help them get over." As the producer of "Superbad," "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" and "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," Apatow got an unprecedented amount of dick into mainstream comedy.  In the latter film, he had a lot of help from star Jason Segal:

Wolverine's sexy/scary nude rampage ranked up there with Schwarzenegger.  Too bad T4 missed out!