Green Lantern is Gay

[ProtonGuy]

You know what bothers me? Having gay pride shoved in my face all the fucking time. I have a best friend who is gay, but that doesn't bother me, why? Because he doesn't remind me every two freaking seconds! What really pisses me off is the shitting on decades worth of continuity, so fuck off DC I'm just going to read IDW's G.I. Joe, and Ninja Turtles until you can stop pulling prom queen publicity stunts.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

So what does this mean for his wife, and his kids.

That's the thing about changing the sexuality and/or race of a established character, it creates ripple effects that force the change of other characters. I have no problem with gay characters I just wish they wouldn't change already established characters to add more "diversity". If you need to have a character to be gay create a new character, like Obsidian.

Also look at it from the reverse can you imagine if someone decided to change an established gay character and make them straight?

Being gay does *not* mean you cannot have kids, guys. Do I really NEED to say this? Or cannot marry a woman, for that matter.

Did I say it did? No it creates inconsistencies with the established lore. Yes it is a reboot however they still use the previous background for his character and besides it all just feels forced on him. Here is a writer on the best way to write a gay character

I think it was implied in the very first sentence, as if gay men or gay people in general can't have opposite sex spouses or children. What does it mean for his wife? Her husband is attracted to other men. What does it mean for his kids? Their father is gay. That's all it means.

...

I will add that being gay only means you are sexually attracted to other men. Nothing says a gay man cannot love a woman, or even marry her or have kids with her. It just means... he's attracted to other men first and foremost.

Two points:

1) It seems like you're using the term 'gay' a bit too generally. I could very well be mistaken about this, but as I understand the terms 'gay' means that you're exclusively attracted to the same sex, 'straight' means that you're exclusively attracted to the opposite sex, and 'bisexual' means that you're attracted to both. So you seem to be conflating 'gay' with 'bisexual'. Or perhaps you regard it as a continuum where 'gay' and 'straight' are two ends of the scale and 'bisexual' is in the middle.

Whatever your answer, you should consider the possibility that there are at least some gay men who might be offended by the idea that you can be gay and also be attracted to women because it might be taken to imply that homosexual people are promiscuous and willing to have sex with anyone. There are certainly some gay men that are solely attracted to other men. Alternatively, there are probably a few lesbians who might be offended by the idea that you can be lesbian and still be attracted to men.

I'm not saying that these people are right: ultimately it's a terminological issue. If you're right and 'gay' and 'lesbian' just mean "predominantly attracted to the same sex" then we could just invent new terms to describe those who are only attracted to the same sex.

2) While in general terms you're right to point out that gay men can have wives and children (assuming 'gay' has the meaning you ascribe to it), spectrenihlus is right to point out that it would cause issues with Scott's backstory. Specifically, part of his backstory (or so I've heard from other posters in this thread) is that his son was gay and that there was a large conflict in him coming to terms with that fact. That makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever if the character is openly gay himself.

 

[LordOfTheDance]

Only 1 person made a, 'his weakness is wood joke'? I am disappoint.

 

[sharinganblossom25]

Huh. Imagine that.

 

[Beautiful End]

Well...I guess they figured after the big screen flop, they couldn't possibly screw Green Lantern more.

Look, I'm all up for diversity and that whole "It's not what defines him" stuff, but it still seems like a publicity stunt, like the Mexican Spider Man. And it's not even the most popular Green Lantern. I call cop-out.

 

[infinity_turtles]

Not too big a fan of this. They could've had a new Green Lantern who was gay, but instead they rewrite Alan Scott and make him younger, which removes his son entirely. And frankly, with the way they're advertising this, I highly doubt this version of Alan Scott will be anywhere near as well written as Obsidian was. Whether he's "iconic" or not, I think this is a pretty poor trade.

 

[Jose Batista]

Damn.. I was only half right, I thought it was gonna be Hal Jordan. Also, in the main DC universe, didn't Alan Scott also have a daughter named Jade?

 

[Aprilgold]

So what does this mean for his wi-

EVERYTHINGS REBOOTED, NOTHING BEFORE THIS COUNTS! IF SUPERMAN WAS TO BECOME A GAY DUDE HE WOULD NOT HAVE EVER GREW A INTEREST TO LOUIS! NOPE, NOTHING BEFORE THIS COUNTS MAN, TOTALLY NEW WORLD!

--------------------------

Needed to be someone thats part of their 7, not iconic as old and should be remembered.

 

[conholio23]

I know that this is an iconic character and sexuality is a big part of what makes a person who they are but I couldn't care less about this. Other then the rage by some mothers who do not know that the cord was cut long ago I really don't know why this is any sort of news. I just hope they do some good stories with this and every other character.

 

[marurder]

I wonder if they would have made him gay if the movie were a bug success..?

 

[LadyRhian]

So what does this mean for his wife, and his kids.

That's the thing about changing the sexuality and/or race of a established character, it creates ripple effects that force the change of other characters. I have no problem with gay characters I just wish they wouldn't change already established characters to add more "diversity". If you need to have a character to be gay create a new character, like Obsidian.

Also look at it from the reverse can you imagine if someone decided to change an established gay character and make them straight?

Being gay does *not* mean you cannot have kids, guys. Do I really NEED to say this? Or cannot marry a woman, for that matter.

Did I say it did? No it creates inconsistencies with the established lore. Yes it is a reboot however they still use the previous background for his character and besides it all just feels forced on him. Here is a writer on the best way to write a gay character

I think it was implied in the very first sentence, as if gay men or gay people in general can't have opposite sex spouses or children. What does it mean for his wife? Her husband is attracted to other men. What does it mean for his kids? Their father is gay. That's all it means.

...

I will add that being gay only means you are sexually attracted to other men. Nothing says a gay man cannot love a woman, or even marry her or have kids with her. It just means... he's attracted to other men first and foremost.

Two points:

1) It seems like you're using the term 'gay' a bit too generally. I could very well be mistaken about this, but as I understand the terms 'gay' means that you're exclusively attracted to the same sex, 'straight' means that you're exclusively attracted to the opposite sex, and 'bisexual' means that you're attracted to both. So you seem to be conflating 'gay' with 'bisexual'. Or perhaps you regard it as a continuum where 'gay' and 'straight' are two ends of the scale and 'bisexual' is in the middle.

Whatever your answer, you should consider the possibility that there are at least some gay men who might be offended by the idea that you can be gay and also be attracted to women because it might be taken to imply that homosexual people are promiscuous and willing to have sex with anyone. There are certainly some gay men that are solely attracted to other men. Alternatively, there are probably a few lesbians who might be offended by the idea that you can be lesbian and still be attracted to men.

I'm not saying that these people are right: ultimately it's a terminological issue. If you're right and 'gay' and 'lesbian' just mean "predominantly attracted to the same sex" then we could just invent new terms to describe those who are only attracted to the same sex.

2) While in general terms you're right to point out that gay men can have wives and children (assuming 'gay' has the meaning you ascribe to it), spectrenihlus is right to point out that it would cause issues with Scott's backstory. Specifically, part of his backstory (or so I've heard from other posters in this thread) is that his son was gay and that there was a large conflict in him coming to terms with that fact. That makes absolutely NO sense whatsoever if the character is openly gay himself.

Gay talks about attraction, not love. You can marry someone you are not attracted to, and have sex with them, and "love" doesn't necessarily imply sexual love. I know gay men who love their female friends. Does this make them suddenly, magically not gay? No. They may not want to shag their friend's bones, and the love might be more platonic, but it's still love. I said nothing about him being attracted to his wife in a sexual way. That is different from love and different from having sex. Because you are attracted to women, does that mean you cannot love your brother, or your father, or a friend? No, it just means you are not sexually attracted to them. That's all it means. You could still have sex with a guy or marry him. Marriage is not predicated on love or attraction-people prove that pretty much all the time, with green card marriages. And gay men have had children while married to a woman, so obviously, it's possible to have sex with a woman while only being attracted to other men.

As to point 2, yeah, that is going to be a conflict, but since they made his character young (again?), he could always go on to get married to a woman and have kids in the future. It's rewinding his story to a point before the marriage and babymaking happened. For me the biggest thing is that they are making him young in the current time, not in the past. Although I did read a story where he teamed up with Batman in the present day universe (not on Earth 2, though). It was in the Graphic Novel "Batman: The Man Who Laughs".

So what does this mean for his wi-

EVERYTHINGS REBOOTED, NOTHING BEFORE THIS COUNTS! IF SUPERMAN WAS TO BECOME A GAY DUDE HE WOULD NOT HAVE EVER GREW A INTEREST TO LOUIS! NOPE, NOTHING BEFORE THIS COUNTS MAN, TOTALLY NEW WORLD!

--------------------------

Needed to be someone thats part of their 7, not iconic as old and should be remembered.

Can I say it? BEST TYPO EVER! Not attracted to Louis? Well, yes, if he was gay, he might be attracted to someone named Louis.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

snip

Gay talks about attraction, not love. You can marry someone you are not attracted to, and have sex with them, and "love" doesn't necessarily imply sexual love. I know gay men who love their female friends. Does this make them suddenly, magically not gay? No. They may not want to shag their friend's bones, and the love might be more platonic, but it's still love. I said nothing about attraction. That is different from love and different from sex. Because you are attracted to women, does that mean you cannot love your brother, or your father, or a friend? No, it just means you are not sexually attracted to them. That's all it means. You could still have sex with a guy or marry him. Marriage is not predicated on love or attraction-people prove that pretty much all the time, with green card marriages. And gay men have had children while married to a woman, so obviously, it's possible to have sex with a woman while only being attracted to other men.

Ah, alright then. I thought you were saying that gay men can have romantic love for a woman, which implies sexual attraction. Sure, gay people can definitely have platonic love for members of the other sex, no question.

You're statement was a bit misleading though, especially the last bit:

I will add that being gay only means you are sexually attracted to other men. Nothing says a gay man cannot love a woman, or even marry her or have kids with her. It just means... he's attracted to other men first and foremost.

So you can see where I got that impression.

 

[Syzygy23]

Wow, they are really getting edgy there making Alan Scott gay. Really, Alan Scott? What a cop out! I would argue he probably only barely makes it into the top 10 when it comes to the most well known Green Lanterns

Maybe it's just me, but Alan Scott is the guy I think of when I think 'green lantern'.

Counts as 'iconic', if you ask me.
As for him being, gay, I'm fine with it, although I would have liked if it was Aquaman. Since he's the king of Atlantis (or is he anymore?) it would have been more interesting. They could have portarayed cultural differences between the races and their attitudes to homosexuality, and there could have been some court-intrique involved.

The only REAL green lantern is Black Guy Green Lantern.

C'mon, he manages to be an intimidating black man WITHOUT being bald.

 

[LadyRhian]

snip

Gay talks about attraction, not love. You can marry someone you are not attracted to, and have sex with them, and "love" doesn't necessarily imply sexual love. I know gay men who love their female friends. Does this make them suddenly, magically not gay? No. They may not want to shag their friend's bones, and the love might be more platonic, but it's still love. I said nothing about attraction. That is different from love and different from sex. Because you are attracted to women, does that mean you cannot love your brother, or your father, or a friend? No, it just means you are not sexually attracted to them. That's all it means. You could still have sex with a guy or marry him. Marriage is not predicated on love or attraction-people prove that pretty much all the time, with green card marriages. And gay men have had children while married to a woman, so obviously, it's possible to have sex with a woman while only being attracted to other men.

Ah, alright then. I thought you were saying that gay men can have romantic love for a woman, which implies sexual attraction. Sure, gay people can definitely have platonic love for members of the other sex, no question.

You're statement was a bit misleading though, especially the last bit:

I will add that being gay only means you are sexually attracted to other men. Nothing says a gay man cannot love a woman, or even marry her or have kids with her. It just means... he's attracted to other men first and foremost.

So you can see where I got that impression.

Yes, I can, and glad to clear up that misconception! I had to rewrite the post you quoted because I felt I wasn't being clear, and to add the comment about "Louis", which was too funny to pass up.

 

[RaNDM G]

Damn. And I was SURE it would be Hawkman.

Why pick this guy though? He married twice and had two kids from his first marriage. Granted that's from a different continuity, but you'd think that would cross over.

 

[Creatural]

snip

That's not a very scientific view point and I wouldn't suggest using a small sample size as a way for you to prove what gay people think, even with that qualifier in there. You may not have intended it in this way but this has come off in such a way that you seem to be trying to use this as a way of supporting your view with evidence backing it up but also saying that it isn't either. It almost looks wishy washy. I'd recommend being clearer in what you type to actually show what you mean and not putting in your personal testing there unless it's actually been done as a proper study.

Lol. Yes, because clearly by saying that I "tested some of them on it" I meant that I had conducted an experiment with strict social-scientific methodology. [/sarcasm] (Also, lol at the phrase "strict social-scientific methodology".)

When I said that "I tested some of them on it" I meant that I engaged someone in a conversation in order to tease out the exact implications of their views. Hence I did not "test" the entire population of the escapist to see what percentage of them held these views, but instead I "tested" the views of particular individuals in order to draw out their presuppositions. If I had meant that I conducted a statistical analysis of the viewpoints of members of the escapist forums I would have said something completely different. But I do apologize as I can see how the term "test" can send people all aflutter with assumptions of scientific pretense on the part of the author. "Made them explicate their views" would have probably been a better phrase. I do hope that clears up any confusion you may have experienced, gentle reader.

Or perhaps you mean to reject all forms of commonsense inductive reasoning from personal experience as illegitimate or "wishy-washy"? If so, you should realize that this would likely cripple the day-to-day activities of your average human being, who relies heavily upon non-scientific inductive inferences from past experience. I was claiming that Bluecho should be prepared for some people to quote him and tell him that one cannot disapprove of homosexuality without being a bigot, not that this would definitely happen. And I'd say I have reasonable evidence to make this inference considering two people responded to some of my previous posts and argued that exact point. Notice that I did not say anything about the probability of it happening because I didn't have enough evidence to support any such probability. Just look at the last sentence of my post:

Let's see if the people in this thread return the favor...

So sure, if that's "wishy-washy" by your standards then I was making a wishy-washy claim. But I don't see anything wrong with "wishy-washy" in that sense, so perhaps someone who criticizes others for vague terminology shouldn't use phrases like "wishy-washy" in the process. ;P

Wishy washy was a teasing term meant to be used to lessen the seriousness of what I said so offense would not be taken to my comment. It's also a teasing based on how unclear previous statements were. I did have to take your term of test more literally than I would most people though as when I've come across people talking about homosexuality in particular when they say they've tested other specifically they do tend to mean that their small amount of "testing" is as legitimate as what an actual study may find. If this were another subject where people talked about testing and didn't mean it seriously so often as I've come across I wouldn't be addressing you about this at all.

That doesn't make wholly excusable as an assumption to make, but hopefully that explains where it came from and why I addressed it as I did in the first place.

snip

Snip.

Also, I'm sorry for my other reply to you since I think I may have fundamentally misunderstood some of the things you were saying and my reply is probably very confusing.

(Oh, and I don't think there was any confusion on my part. I didn't assume that you belonged to any of my hypothetical groups and I was arguing against them, not you. I tend to argue in hypotheticals, which often gives people the mistaken impression that I'm committing them to a straw man position when I'm actually just trying to elucidate all the possible positions one might take in an argument. I'm certainly not assuming that you would want the government to rule in favor of the diocese in the example I just gave.)

Not the reply I meant and I may be reading this wrong as it is late o'clock but I didn't mean to imply that there was any confusion on your part, I put it specifically on my part for a reason. And no, you're very clearly arguing in hypotheticals and not using strawman arguments. Strawman arguments tend not to explore things or go into as much detail about differing sides as you have.

What I misunderstood was the nature of something else you were talking about which is covered above.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

snip
...
So sure, if that's "wishy-washy" by your standards then I was making a wishy-washy claim. But I don't see anything wrong with "wishy-washy" in that sense, so perhaps someone who criticizes others for vague terminology shouldn't use phrases like "wishy-washy" in the process. ;P

Wishy washy was a teasing term meant to be used to lessen the seriousness of what I said so offense would not be taken to my comment. It's also a teasing based on how unclear previous statements were. I did have to take your term of test more literally than I would most people though as when I've come across people talking about homosexuality in particular when they say they've tested other specifically they do tend to mean that their small amount of "testing" is as legitimate as what an actual study may find. If this were another subject where people talked about testing and didn't mean it seriously so often as I've come across I wouldn't be addressing you about this at all.

That doesn't make wholly excusable as an assumption to make, but hopefully that explains where it came from and why I addressed it as I did in the first place.

Lol. Don't worry about it, I knew where you were coming from. I was just returning the favor. (Notice the emboldened thing at the end of my post.)

 

[Strazdas]

Im confused. Judging from their "Reboot" movie they made few years ago, he seemt not only heterosexual, but quite a sex addict, you know, one of those quagmire types but not really overboard yet. and not they announce he is gay. I got ntohing about it being gay, its just that its totally ignoring the movie (bad as it was).

 

[Cyrus Hanley]

I'm still confused by people who say that this change fucks up all the previously established canon.

If this a new continuity, then WTF is the problem? He might not even have a wife or son.

If he does, then explore that within the context of rebooted universe. Maybe instead of Green Lantern struggling to accept a son who's gay, we could have a son who struggles to accept a father who is gay.

Im confused. Judging from their "Reboot" movie they made few years ago, he seemt not only heterosexual, but quite a sex addict, you know, one of those quagmire types but not really overboard yet. and not they announce he is gay. I got ntohing about it being gay, its just that its totally ignoring the movie (bad as it was).

The Green Lantern in that film is Hal Jordan, the one we're talking about in this thread is Alan Scott (the original).

 

[Keava]

Almost got it. Was pretty sure it would be Green Lantren considering it's probably the easiest of all heroes to do with as there was just so many of them. But going with such obscure one? Meh.