Friday, July 09, 2010

Know Your LGBT History - Making Love



Making Love (1982) was a movie that was groundbreaking in the fact that it seriously looked at a gay relationship. No comedy, no parody, no caricatures.

It told the story of a married man (Michael Ontkean) who suddenly finds himself attracted to another man (Harry Hamlin). Needless to say that it causes problems with his wife (Kate Jackson).

Making Love wasn't a hit but it wasn't a bad film. It was the first movie I saw which didn't treat being an lgbt as a joke or a humiliation.

And to me, it doesn't seem dated at all. I still find it a refreshing movie that needs another look. I also think it would do much better as a Broadway play.

Past Know Your LGBT History postings

Know Your LGBT History - A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy's Revenge

Know Your LGBT History - Noah's Arc

Know Your LGBT History - Ode to Billy Joe

Know Your LGBT History - Adorable Adrian Adonis

Know Your LGBT History - The Night Strangler

Know Your LGBT History - All in the Family

Know Your LGBT History - Tongues Untied

Know Your LGBT History - The Celluloid Closet

Know Your LGBT History - Querelle

Know Your LGBT History - Theatre of Blood

Know Your LGBT History - Strange Fruit

Know Your LGBT History - Designing Women

Know Your LGBT History - The Children's Hour

Know Your LGBT History - Sylvester

Know Your LGBT History - Once Bitten

Know Your LGBT History - The Boys in the Band

Know Your LGBT History - Christopher Morley, the crossdressing assassin

Know Your LGBT History - Midnight Cowboy

Know Your LGBT History - Dracula's Daughter

Know Your LGBT History - Blacula

Know Your LGBT History - 3 Strikes

Know Your LGBT History - Paris Is Burning

Know Your LGBT History - The Women

Know your LGBT History - Soul Plane

Know Your LGBT History - The Player's Club

Special Know Your LGBT History - Fame

Know Your LGBT History - Welcome Home, Bobby

Know Your LGBT History - Barney Miller

Know your lgbt history - The Jerry Springer Show

Know your lgbt history - Martin Lawrence and that 'gay guy' on his show

Know your lgbt history - The Ricki Lake Show

Know your lgbt history - Which Way Is Up

Know your lgbt history - Gays in Primetime Soaps

Know your lgbt history - Boys Beware

Know your lgbt history - The Boondocks

Know your lgbt history - Mannequin

Know your lgbt history - The Warriors

Know Your LGBT History - New York Undercover

Know Your LGBT History - Low Down Dirty Shame

Know Your LGBT History - Fortune and Men's Eyes

Know your lgbt history - California Suite

Know your lgbt history - Taxi (Elaine's Strange Triangle)

Know your lgbt history - Come Back Charleston Blue

Know your lgbt history - James Bond goes gay

Know your lgbt history - Windows

Know your lgbt history - To Wong Foo and Priscilla

Know your lgbt history - Blazing Saddles

Know your lgbt history - Sanford and Son

Know your lgbt history - In Living Color

Know your lgbt history - Cleopatra Jones and her lesbian drug lords

Know your lgbt history - Norman, Is That You?

Know your lgbt history - The 'Exotic' Adrian Street

Know your lgbt history - The Choirboys

Know your lgbt history - Eddie Murphy

Know your lgbt history - The Killing of Sister George

Know your lgbt history - Hanna-Barbera cartoons pushes the 'gay agenda

'Know your lgbt history - Cruising

Know your lgbt history - Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones

Know your lgbt history - I Got Da Hook Up

Know your lgbt history - Fright Night

Know your lgbt history - Flowers of Evil

The Jeffersons and the transgender community  
 



Bookmark and Share

Anita Bryant returns to plague us again and other Friday midday news briefs

Anita Bryant returns to the 'culture wars' - Judging from the company she is keeping at the event in question, it will be like she never left.

Obama US Attorney expected to stand behind federal gay marriage ban, plaintiffs say - DON'T YOU DARE, PRESIDENT OBAMA!

Welcome to the Andrea Lafferty offense boat, entire state of Massachusetts! - And where would the religious right be without an offensive comment on yesterday's anti-DOMA ruling by Andrea Lafferty and the Traditional Values Coalition?

NOM Is Furious — Just Furious! - And of course the National Organization for Marriage is extremely upset over the ruling. It's been a good day ;p

The Palm Center releases the DADT surveySome of these questions are interesting, to say the least.

Woodstock benefit for lesbian teen raises $30K - And Constance McMillen continues to kick ass. Way to go, girlfriend!


Bookmark and Share

Cure for HIV around the corner?

No comments on the religious right this morning. Just a focus on some good news:

American scientists are touting a major stride toward a vaccine that can ward off HIV, after finding two key proteins that neutralize 91 percent of the virus' 190 strains.

The team of researchers with the National Institutes of Health's Vaccine Research Center hopes the antibody discovery can spur successful work toward a method of preventing HIV, which already afflicts an estimated 33 million people worldwide.

The discovery, published in this week's Science, is courtesy of Donor 45, an unidentified African-American man whose body produced the antibodies, called VRC01 and VRC02.

Scientists have already identified the 12 cells in his body that produced the proteins. If they can harness the mechanisms by which the antibodies were made, they might be able to create a vaccine that would spur anybody's body to make the HIV destroyers.

"We're going to be at this for a while," Gary Nabel, director of the center and a leader on this research, told The Wall Street Journal.

The last few years has seen a flurry of effort -- much of it futile -- toward creating a vaccine for HIV, much like those that helped eradicate small pox and polio. Until now, however, single antibodies only appeared to block one or two HIV strains.

Trials on the first promising vaccine, AIDSVAX, were largely a disappointment. In American and Thai trials, the vaccine yielded success rates that varied from statistically insignificant to 30 percent.

In this case, researchers seem to have found a sweet spot on the surface of the human immunodeficiency virus.

"The antibodies attach to a virtually unchanging part of the virus, and this explains why they can neutralize such an extraordinary range of HIV strains," Dr. John Mascola, one of the study's researchers, said in a statement.

Turning these newly discovered antibodies into a useful HIV vaccine remains a tall order. Scientists would need to isolate the specific part of the virus that the antibodies latch onto, then craft a vaccine using that viral snippet to train the body to produce VRC01 and VRC02.

More here.

HIV/AIDS affects all of us. I've lost a few friends to disease, including my older brother. This is definitely a step in the right direction. Let's hope that progress continues so that one day, HIV/AIDS goes the way of the dinosaur.




Bookmark and Share