Yesterday Oprah devoted her show to the theme of "Gay Around the World".
It featured interviews with Prince Manvendra Singh Gohil of Rajpipla, who came out in 2006 and was disowned by his family and much of his community, Staceyann Chin, a Jamaican lesbian forced to flee the homophobia in her own country, and John Amaechi, the first NBA player to be open about his sexuality.
The conversations with the guests were remarkably candid and personal. It was a powerful insight into the stories of these extremely articulate and very brave individuals.
It managed to deal openly with the issues of homosexuality in America while at the same time focusing the spotlight on the human rights abuses against gay and lesbian people in the rest of the world – including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Uganda and Nigeria.
As we all know many of the barriers and misconceptions are broken down when people have of gays and lesbians in their families, workplaces and friendship groups. That is not always possible in every community but dealing with these issues, and most importantly featuring real people who are gay and lesbian on shows like this can be a powerful force for change via the media.
There is also an interview with Mazan, an Egyptian man who was among “The Cairo 52” who were arrested and imprisoned for being “suspected of being gay” that was not on the show but it is available on the website.
There has been much talk, some would say hype, about the power of Oprah but I have no doubt that the message of tolerance and acceptance she gave in her final remarks (available in the video section of the website) will prove more powerful and reach a larger, engaged mainstream audience than any speech from a politician or PSA from a gay celebrity.
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This is good news for Oprah. She often had lesbian and gay people on her show and then allowed right wing fundamentalist christians on during the same segment. I wonder how she would feel if her producer brought out a KKK person to follow up a nice story about a mixed race couple.
She is starting to embrace gay and lesbian folks. That is wonderful.
She gets defensive of being called a lesbian or Stedman being called gay. She should not feel insulted, but praised.