Moonrise Kingdom (5/5 Stars)

“Let’s make an inventory”

Says Sam Schukusky to Suzy Bishop, once the two twelve year olds have successfully run away from their respective adults (parents for Suzy, a junior khaki troop for Sam) to elope on the New England island of Penzance. And make an inventory they do. Suzy is carrying her brother’s record player with extra batteries, her favorite LP, her pet kitten, several of her favorite science fiction books, her lucky left-handed scissors, and her much-loved set of binoculars. She carefully explains why each item is important. And if you haven’t guessed already, this scene is taking place in a movie written/directed by Wes Anderson, because, really, who else would have characters take the time to do an inventory of the things they are carrying. I mean, if it isn’t a war movie and the characters aren’t talking strategy and weapons, an inventory is almost unheard of in movies. This is just one particular touch, along with absurdly detailed set designs and costumes, obsessively neat and tidy dialogue, and super-controlled camera shots, that scream out that you are in that most distinctive of styles, Wes Anderson cinema. No other movie looks or works quite the way his do.

Now this does not automatically mean that his movies are good, in fact it has been a decade since he made a movie that needed seeing. The distinctive style that makes his films stand out also tend to undermine the story and move it toward the unfortunate territory of boredom. But, I’ve always felt there was a great movie just waiting to be made by the guy, and I’m glad to say he has finally made it. “Moonrise Kingdom,” is one of the best movies of the year. It succeeds in all the places his earlier movies have failed without sacrificing any of the trademark idiosyncrasies that make Anderson films such unique experiences. 

First the two kids are genuinely likable and may have some actual problems. I would like to emphasize the word “actual” here because so many of Anderson’s characters don’t have actual problems. They are generally well-to-do good-looking people afflicted with a type of depressing boredom or something. Like for instance, the three brothers in “the Darjeeling Limited” had unexplained father "issues" so they went on a long train ride in India to bond. Being able to afford to go on a long train ride in India to bond with family isn’t exactly evidence of a real world problem. I would guess that’s why so many of these characters tend to suffer quietly in whispers. They seem to be some acknowledgement that it is kind of pathetic to be unhappy while blessed by their relative circumstances. Anyway, this isn’t something to worry about in this story. Sam Shukusky is an orphan recently dumped by his latest foster parents and Suzy Bishop is emotionally disturbed. Or at least she has good reason to think she might be. She found a pamphlet entitled, “Coping with the Very Troubled Child,” on the top of her refrigerator, which is admittedly a kind of a freaky thing to find in your house. Neither have any friends, but they do like each other, and their love story is sweet and touching.

It takes a certain kind of skill to act effectively in a Wes Anderson movie. There is always a temptation to softly speak in long pauses. Take for instance Gwyneth Paltrow’s character in “The Royal Tenenbaums.” This however is a boring mistake. Instead the exact opposite needs to be done. An actor needs to fit in as many yells as possible within the tight framework of stilted dialogue. This is essentially the only way to break through the gorgeous/suffocating style to achieve some sort of catharsis and why an action blockbuster star like Bruce Willis, playing the island police officer, is a much better casting choice than a mellow guy like Owen Wilson. Otherwise an actor needs the jujitsu comedy skills of a guy like Bill Murray, also present playing Suzy's father, who has the unique ability to take the style and subtly play it against itself by under-under-playing his performance, see the scene with the axe and the little kids. We’ve got some passionate speakers here. Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman and Harvey Keitel, as scoutmasters, put in a ridiculous degree of professionalism in directing boy scouts. Frances McDormand doesn’t yell but carries around a bullhorn and uses it whenever she speaks. 

It's all done very well. Someone here between Murray, Willis, Norton, and Schwartzman deserves an Oscar Nomination for Best Supporting Actor but I can’t really decide who deserves it more than the others. A safe choice is Bruce Willis, who in his very long career has amazingly never received any real recognition for anything. Given his perfect performances in great movies such as “Die Hard,” “Pulp Fiction,” “The Sixth Sense,” and "Sin City" he is a bit overdue. For all his machoness, he has done some of his best work with children, and there is a scene here with the orphan Sam after he has been caught, separated from his love, and notified that his foster parents do not want him back that contains every correct thing you can say said in all the correct ways in such a situation.

Lastly, Wes Anderson has finally figured out how to end his movies on a high note. This movie has an exciting third act with an honest to god action sequence that doesn’t have some winking existential sigh of a conclusion. (Contrast this with “The Life Aquatic,” and his weird decision not to blow up the tiger shark with dynamite as planned.) In other words, the movie like so many other Wes Anderson previous efforts doesn’t run out of steam before the end. This is probably his crowning achievement and what makes this movie his best movie yet. (I will forever love “Rushmore” more yes, but that is strictly for personal not critical reasons, like say, the main character’s name being Max)

When you have a style that is especially distinctive (like say Altman or Kubrick) it is especially hard to judge your movie because they are so unlike anything else. So it would not come as a surprise to me if “Moonrise Kingdom” was completely ignored come Oscar time. It shouldn’t be though. Among the more obvious things it should be acknowledged for are the original score by Alexandre Desplat (you may remember him from “The Tree of Life”), and the art direction by Gerald Sullivan. The not so obvious things would be a nomination for best director for Wes Anderson and best original screenplay for Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola. And why not, nods for cinematography, editing, and Bruce Willis. It should go without saying that a Best Picture nod is called for as this is one of the best movies of the year.

Prometheus (5/5 Stars)

A worthy addition to the franchise

It is the year 2089 and a couple of archaeologists excavate a cave in Scotland. They find a cave painting of a large humanoid pointing at what looks like five stars. The same mural had been found in the ancient murals of the Egyptians, Sumerians, Mayans, and Babylonians as well. These civilizations had little to no contact with each other. What’s more, the five stars can actually be found in the nighttime sky. One of these stars is very similar to Earth’s sun and orbiting it is a large gas planet with a moon very similar to Earth. Is it a message? A warning? An invitation for man to meet its makers? Five years later, the Weyland Corporation sponsors a spaceship named Prometheus and its crew of engineers and scientists to make an investigatory trip to that far off galaxy. They find almost exactly what they are looking for: an ancient pyramid with the long forgotten carvings of a humanoid species of alien. But they also find a not very well intentioned something else living inside. Then people start dying.

The look and the feel of the movie should be instantly recognizable for those familiar with the “Alien” franchise. The font for the title is the same, the style of futurisitic technology and set design is the same, and the director, Ridley Scott, was actually the director of the first “Alien” movie (but none of the others. This was way back in 1979). The plot (humans investigate, find hostile aliens, people start dying, the corporate agents act amorally, and more people die) is fundamentally the same as the first several movies, but differs in all the correct ways. There are new thrills, new themes, and new developments in what happens to who and when. I'm being vague on purpose. This is one of those movies where the less I say about the plot, the better experience the reader will have when they see it. So let me just say that the movie is similar enough to the original movies that they make sense being in this franchise but different enough that you will still actually be shocked when you should be. Or in other words, you can enjoy this movie without having seen any of the others and having seen the other movies won’t diminish the experience of this one. This is a quality (the ability to expand on the themes and look of previous movies without violating basic copyright laws) that marks all great sequels and prequels and what makes “Prometheus” a worthy addition to the “Alien” franchise.

No actors from previous installments of the franchise are present in “Prometheus,” but that does not stop this movie from having one of the best ensemble casts in any movie this year. None of these actors are A-List, but to the cinephile in the audience, it is a hugely heavyweight collection of intelligent badassery. First off, playing the ship’s captain is Idris Elba (aka “Stringer Bell” from “The Wire.”) This guy must be a good 6’4” composed entirely of muscle yet still would not look the least out of place in glasses reading a book on quantum mechanics. Not an easy thing to do. Then there is the corporate overseer played by Charlize Theron (aka the “Monster”), who has recently accomplished the feat of being in her late thirties and more stunningly beautiful than she has ever been. Charlize certainly doesn’t need help being tall, but that doesn’t stop her character from wearing five-inch power high-heels, a touch that along with an icy glare gives her screen presence an effect similar to, well, I can’t think of any other woman but Sigourney Weaver. Next is the new golden-boy of serious cinema, Michael Fassbender, who you may be most familiar as the young “Magneto” in the latest X-Men movie. Fassbender has a face and build that makes him perfect for playing a super intelligent and amoral android.  There’s a great scene when he watches his favorite movie, “Lawrence of Arabia,” and the resemblance is uncanny. He has the same intense gaze of a young Peter O’Toole.

Finally there is Noomi Rapace (aka the original and actually Swedish “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) playing the archeaologist. She is noticeably softer than Lizbeth Salandar but the events she goes through are just as traumatic if not more so. I always hesitate to say an actor/actress is brave because you know in the end, it is all just pretending. But for a select few I will pull out that adjective. Christian Bale is one and also Noomi Rapace. It is hard to judge a science fiction performance come Oscar time because the great ones generally require actions in situations that have never been done before (in contrast a performance in a movie adapted from Shakespeare is perhaps the easiest to judge) but as you reflect on this movie, ask yourself this question about that particular scene you must know I am talking about: Who else could have done it better, or better yet, who else could have even done it? (And don’t say Rooney Mara unless you want to piss me off.) For the fourth time in as many movies as I have seen her in, I believe Noomi Rapace deserves an Oscar Nomination. Perhaps the best compliment I can give this movie however has to do with the fact that Sigourney Weaver is not missed. That’s huge because Weaver is arguably the best female action heroine to ever grace the movie screen. But here I am saying it: Rapace and Theron, more than make up for the absence. There is some serious intelligent badass female empowerment going on here. Ridley Scott never seems to disappoint in that area. 

The main flaw in this movie is that it asks several big questions like: Where do we come from? Who are our makers? What do they think of how we turned out? and then does not answer any of them. This does not bother me that much though because these questions really do not have any decent answers and when a movie tries to provide these answers it is always unsatisfactory anyways (see 6th season of “Lost,” the “Matrix” sequels). There is a moment in this movie when the maker has the opportunity to say something and instead just starts being violent. What could it have said? I have no idea. It could have been cool if he had said the correct thing whatever that is. He does not say anything and that is a shame, but I’m not about to fault the writers for not knowing what the meaning of life is. Asking the questions is good enough for me. 

Five Films Series: Super Gay Edition

Joe: What happened?
Jerry: I’m engaged.
Joe: Congratulations! Who’s the lucky girl?
Jerry: I am
Joe: What!
Jerry: Osgood proposed to me. We’re planning a June Wedding.
Joe: What are you talking about? You can’t marry Osgood.
Jerry: You think he’s too old for me?
Joe: Jerry, you can’t be serious.
Jerry: Why not?? He keeps marrying girls all the time.
Joe: But- but you’re not a girl. You’re a guy. And why would a guy want to marry a guy?
Jerry: Security

 - Some Like it Hot (1959) Written and Directed by Billy Wilder

This edition of the Five Films series is different from the others. First, the topic that has been chosen, Homosexuality, is not something you can find many examples of in old movies. Unlike a topic such as race, homosexuality was either not talked about or censored. Take the above joke from 1959 in Billy Wilder’s Some Like it Hot. The character of Jerry asks, “Why would a guy want to marry a guy?” in a state of complete befuddlement. Apparently he has never even heard of homosexuality. And it’s not that the character of Joe is homosexual either (he isn’t for those unacquainted with the movie. Joe and Jerry have disguised themselves as women in order to infiltrate an all-women band and escape the mob) although he does hit on the basic reason why people want to marry each other. A rich playboy asked him thinking he was a girl and as he explains to Jerry, this is his last chance to marry a millionaire.

Second, unlike race, the national controversy about homosexuality is far from over in our time. (And when I say that the controversy concerning race is over, I simply mean you will be hard-pressed to find a large and outspoken segment of the population that does not think racism is bad and isn’t against it.) Only in the past year, has a majority of the American people polled in support of gay marriage. At the same time there have been a large number of states that have outright banned gay marriage in their state constitutions. But our culture’s view, expressed in those time capsules we call movies, has indeed changed, and that change is what I hope to chronicle here.

All That Heaven Allows (1955) – Directed by Douglas Sirk

 

Take note! This movie is not about homosexuality. It never even mentions the subject. I don’t know of many movies from this period that do. More importantly, I don’t know any great movies that do. And no matter what I feel about the subject matter, the main point of the “Five Films Series” is to recommend great movies. So I am not going to recommend Ed Wood’s “Glen or Glenda.” I haven’t seen it but I’ve heard it’s terrible.

 This one will work just fine. (I also deliberated on recommending “Lawrence of Arabia.” Homosexuality isn’t mentioned at all in that one as well, even though it is widely suspected that the biographical Lawrence was homosexual. We don’t know for sure and know even less as to whether he if ever acted on it if he was. We just don’t know basically.) For two reasons I will choose “All That Heaven Allows.” The first is that it is about forbidden love, albeit a heterosexual one between a rich widow from the country club set and her much younger gardener. Second reason is that the actor who plays the young gardener is Rock Hudson, a heterosexual sex symbol throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He was best known for playing virile Texan oil tycoons (see Giant) until he was involuntary outed as a homosexual in the 1985 when he died of A.I.D.S. It came as a huge surprise to many people. That very manly man was super gay the entire time.

 It is completely inescapable to watch this movie and not think about it. One of the great strengths of Douglas Sirk’s directing style is its unapologetic directness. It is a type of movie making that nowadays has gone completely out of style, only to be used ineffectively by daytime soap operas and endlessly parodied by sketch comedy shows. But here, because of the time period, the melodramatic oppression of conformity is believable and is especially disquieting.

 There are many nice touches that make this small movie a great movie. The gentle honest moments between the two very different people that explain exactly how and why they feel a strong connection. The cynical reactions from the gossip crowd that don’t understand the match and insist that the main motivations must either be the gardener’s sex appeal or the widow’s inheritance and probably both. The couple’s fears that their love would turn the widow’s children against her and make her lose her place in society. Dialogue about being “true to thine own self,” being brave enough to live the correct way, and making sure what is unimportant stays unimportant. And how the couple’s plans to get married are eventually and realistically derailed by a sense of shame stemming from societal disapproval. The widow’s son buys her one of those newfangled television sets to cheer her up. “All you have to do is turn the dial and you have all the company you want right there on the screen-drama, comedy, life’s parade at your fingertips…” says the salesman. A poor substitute for love.

 

  The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) – Directed by Jim Sharman

 

Starting in the 1960s, homosexuality starting popping up in movies, albeit in stand alone scenes, either as a joke or some sort of horrible experience, and sometimes both. In 1967, Mel Brooks made “The Producers,” a story about a couple of Broadway producers attempting to make lots of money from little old ladies by overselling a sure-fire flop. The producers seek out the “worst director in the world,” a gay man that meets them in a full dress and complains how the story “Springtime for Hitler,” is depressing because in the third act the Nazis lose the war. In 1969, the Best Picture winner “Midnight Cowboy,” featured perhaps one of the most awkward and cringe inducing sexual encounters (homo or hetero) ever in a movie. It takes place between two complete strangers in a filthy movie theater in a disgusting NY Times Square. My favorite though is the ten seconds in Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry” when the cop is searching a San Francisco park at night for a serial killer and happens upon a nervous young man named “Alice” who says he will take a dare. Harry discloses that he is police and the young man threatens to kill himself. “Well, do it at home!” growls Harry.

 Then like a thunderbolt, the silence is broken. Out of nowhere, adapted from a little known British stage production, comes “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” And this isn’t just any movie; it is a bizarre musical horror/science fiction parody, a frenetic freak show full of gleeful shock and awe. It is the ultimate and definitive cult classic. A movie that caused absolutely no ripples in the box office when it opened but through strong word of mouth, repeat viewings, and midnight event showings now holds the world record for longest theatrical release. In fact it is still being shown at several theaters. (Chelsea’s Clearview in NYC still shows it Saturdays at midnight and that is where I first saw it two years ago). You may want to see the movie first at home before seeing it in a movie theater though because its hard to hear the movie over everyone in the theater screaming the entire time.

Homosexuality isn’t just present in this movie. It is brazenly outspoken in a horrifyingly sacrilegious and depraved way. The movie starts with a newly engaged straight-laced couple named Brad and Janet (a young Susan Sarandon), whose car gets a flat and strands them next to a gothic castle. Inside they find a bunch of tap-dancing freaks led by a murdering transvestite in horror makeup named Dr. Frankenfurter (Tim Curry in a role of a lifetime). He is constructing in his lab a perfect man-specimen, which he names Rocky Horror and plans to use exclusively for gratifying his homosexual lust.

 Anyone watching this movie and not knowing anything about homosexuality will not come out thinking that it is anywhere near normal behavior. In fact, the transvestites aren’t even human. They are aliens from the planet Transsexual in the galaxy Transylvania. They came down here in a time warp and oh well nevermind. The point is that this movie and how it was seen is indicative of how people thought about homosexuality in the 1970s. It was underground, it was extreme, and it was something you did in secret in the middle of the night with a bunch of other like-minded weirdos. (p.s. Don’t let that last line fool you into thinking I don’t heartily recommend this movie.)

 Let it be noted that “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” has never been associated with homophobia. It was largely successful only in neighborhoods with a large homosexual population. So unlike “A Birth of a Nation,” it speaks less about societal prejudice than it does about the type of person who engages in the type of taboo that will end up ostracizing themselves from society. In other words, it takes an extreme person to openly engage in the type of behavior that will eventually cost them family, friends, and church (as coming out in the 1970s regularly did). Would a normal person be able to make that choice? And if they did, is it something that can only be done halfway?

 

Philadelphia (1993) – Directed by Jonathan Demme 

 

 You can’t ignore a dreaded deadly infectious disease. Homosexuality for the longest time was something slept under the rug and ignored. You could live your entire life without noticing that it ever existed. And then in the eighties and early nineties, thousands of people started dying each year from a new sexually transmitted disease named A.I.D.S., a disproportionate number of them having contracted the disease through homosexual relations. And these weren’t just the stereotypical “freaks” you might meet at a shady cineplex in the middle of the night; these were well known famous heterosexuals who (gasp!) had been gay all along. People like Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury, involuntary outed as homosexuals on their deathbeds.

 A.I.D.S. unlike homosexuality was especially visible. Someone who had it wasted away in front of your eyes. Other times they developed sizable lesions on their skin. This is what happens to the lawyer Andrew Beckett (played by Tom Hanks in an Oscar Winning Role) in “Philadelphia.” One of the partners of his law firm recognizes his lesions as the result of A.I.D.S. and not long after, Beckett finds himself fired for incompetence by the same colleagues that just made him a partner and put him in charge of one of their biggest cases. Of course, Beckett was fired not because he was incompetent. He was not even fired because he had A.I.D.S. He was fired because his disease outed him as a homosexual and to the partners of his law firm this means that he is an unfit degenerate (think Dr. Frankenfurter in “Rocky Horror”). But Andrew Beckett is a lawyer and he knows there are laws against discrimination (i.e. formulating opinions about others not based on their individual merits, but rather on their membership in a group with assumed characteristics.) Armed with that legal rationale, Andrew Beckett takes his former partners to court for unlawful termination.

 This movie could have just been simply a court battle between Andrew Beckett and his former partners, but these forces are actually both antagonists in this story. The main character is the lawyer that represents Andrew Beckett, one Joe Miller (played by Denzel Washington.) I refer to him as the main character because Joe Miller is the person who changes during the story. The character of Joe Miller is not unlike the white racist sheriff in “In the Heat of the Night.” He starts off homophobic. He is afraid he may contract A.I.D.S. by shaking Andrew’s hand. He finds homosexual sex disgusting. In one scene, he gets especially angry when he is mistaken as gay in public because he has taken on Beckett’s case. But as a lawyer (and just maybe as an African American) he understands discrimination and as the story progresses, he not only comes to understand that was Andrew Beckett unlawfully terminated but that he too has engaged in it himself. He starts seeing this person not as a homosexual with A.I.D.S. but as a complex and decent person who just happens to be a homosexual. Spending time with people will do that. It’s only human.

 

 Ellen, “The Puppy Episode” (1997) 

 

 Because of our society’s love affair of new technology, social change seems to happen quicker nowadays. This TV episode only happened four years after “Philadelphia,” but I include because it is one of those watershed moments where tolerance really started to pick up steam. After this aired, you started seeing gay characters in TV series and movies everywhere. It was no longer a problem anymore as far as Hollywood was concerned.

 And I would argue that one of the biggest reasons is the type of person who started coming out around this time. These were not freaks like the creatures of “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” that cavorted in horror labs and mocked family and church. These weren’t even those that were publicly respected but had succumbed to a dreaded disease brought upon by engaging in secret lifestyles. This was an entirely different breed of public homosexual. In 1997 Ellen Degeneres came out twice. She came out as a lesbian in her personal life and as her TV character “Ellen” in the famous, “Puppy Episode.” (This move would eventually get her TV show cancelled and would put her out of work for three years.)

 There is one striking thing that it is just too obvious to overlook about Ellen Degeneres. She is not a terrible person. She was a completely clean comedian. She never cursed, never was vulgar, and mainly joked in that Seinfeldesque vein of observational humor and quirky thoughts. Her show was strictly PG. And when she came out, she did it in a genuinely funny and nice way. She wasn’t angry with anybody. If you were homophobic, she seemed to go out of the way to hold your hand and guide you through it. It is one thing to say you don’t want Dr. Frankenfurter around your children, but how can you keep a straight face and say the same thing about Ellen.

 

 Getting an honorable mention from this year is the Kevin Kline comedy, “In and Out.” I won’t say too much about it other than it too is about the coming out of a really nice character, a romantic literature professor. Here is my favorite scene in the movie.

 

  Milk (2008) – Directed by Gus Van Sant 

 

 The first I ever heard of Harvey Milk, was a discussion in a criminology class about “The Twinkie Defense.” A lawyer from San Francisco claimed that his client, a man by the name of Dan White, was not responsible for the assassination of the Mayor of San Francisco and a city supervisor named Harvey Milk because he was hopped up on too much junk food. The jury may have agreed because they only gave Dan White a four-year prison term. That may seem odd to you. Dan White murdered two elected officials and received only four years from the jury.

 Well maybe it would make more sense if I told you that Harvey Milk was the first openly gay public official ever elected in this country and more can be attributed to him for the successes of the early gay rights movement than any other public figure. The movie “Milk” chronicles the life of Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn in an Oscar winning role) and is narrated by a lone Harvey Milk at his kitchen table giving a living will into a tape recorder in the event that he would be assassinated, which he eventually would be. This movie is more than just a great biopic though. It is also a great movie about American democracy, because it shows just how one man can use those great freedom loving tools, politics and capitalism, to change society.

Harvey Milk did not like how the street businesses in his community discriminated against his fellow homosexuals. So he made a list of all the gay-friendly businesses in town and all the not gay-friendly businesses in town. Then he networked with his community. He got everyone to stop buying things from businesses that were run by assholes. This works. Soon enough, the neighbor that gave Harvey Milk a less than polite welcome finds himself having to be polite in order to keep his business afloat. Milk then uses his existing network to do favors for other local forces like unions, newspapers, and political parties. He gains influence and runs for office. As an open homosexual, he introduces the topic in debates. He organizes protests and rallies to make the issue more visible. He goes across the state to such hostile places as Orange County to spread his sometimes very unwelcome message. He cleans up the epidemic of dog shit at the local park (Not a LGBT issue but still important to society). He is a great role model for those who would bring about how social change. He gets rid of his hippie beard and wears a suit. He often tells jokes to break the ice of with people he is attempting to recruit to his cause. And he is willing to work with other not-like minded people (for instance Dan White) on other issues they may agree on.

 This movie holds a special place for me because it helped evolve my view on LGBT issues. Until I had seen it, gay marriage, was something that I considered none of my business. I felt I did not have to care about it one way or another. Then I saw a scene in this movie that really took me by surprise. Harvey Milk is having a birthday party at the capitol when Dan White shows up drunk. Dan White, who is not doing well politically at that point, goes up to Harvey Milk and claims that homosexuality is merely an issue that helps Milk get elected. And this is when I expected Harvey Milk to do the Ellen Degeneres thing and calmly and jokingly explain to Dan White that he is mistaken but it is okay because he understands where he is coming from. But Milk does not do that. Milk gets angry. He informs Dan that this is not an “issue.” “This is our lives we’re fighting for,” he says. Milk goes on to inform Dan that he has had two lovers in the past that he had to talk out of suicide (one more will actually go on to commit suicide before the movie is over.) He could not be more serious about the importance of what he is trying to accomplish.

 The message to me was clear. It is not okay that you don’t understand or don’t care to understand or wish that the whole thing would just go away. The time for the apologetic friendliness of Ellen-types is over. Now is the time to finally realize that lives are being ruined. Life, that thing you only get one of. This is far more important than the semantics of what the word “marriage” means. Admittedly the Bible is against it. But then again the Bible believes in the power of witches and that the sun revolves around the Earth. Just because the Bible is wrong doesn’t mean that God doesn’t exist, it just means that the people who wrote the Bible lived in the goddamn Bronze Age. Gain some context, a little empathy, and grow the fuck up.