Gay Pride Month, Day 12 - The (Clinically) Smutty Version: Virginia is for Straight Lovers

In concurrence with my brother, I'm back-posting an entry for yesterday that's even nearer and drearer to me than to eloquentwthrage, since I live in the District of Columbia but work in Northern Virginia. As recently as last November the Commonwealth of Virginia put the question of gay marriage to its voters, 57 percent of whom approved a statewide ban on gay marriage.

As seen on sodomylaws.org, Virginia STILL has sodomy laws against anal and oral sex, male of female, same or opposite sex. (It is not clear whether autofellatio violates the sodomy law.) Virginia has a great history w/r/t criminalizing all kinds of sex acts that most of the rest of the human race find perfectly normal and acceptable. In 1812 Virginia was the first state in the Union to rule, via its Supreme Court, that semen is not an essential component to sodomy; in other words, as soon as a cock goes in my mouth, I'm guilty of Class 6 felony.

Virginia originally enacted the oral piece of its sodomy law to be male-male only (in 1916, prior to which sodomy had for centuries been construed as anal sex, and usually only between men), but later amended that to be equally Puritanical re heteroslurping.

The 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision Lawrence v. Texas "found sodomy laws to be an unconstitutional violation of liberty when applied to non-commercial, consensual sex between adults in private. Virginia's fornication and cohabitation laws are also unconstitutional as a result of this opinion." Nonetheless, throughout the more primitive wilds of Virginia, people continue to get arrested for sodomy—and, not surprisingly, they are disproportionately gay people.

Side note: Today in 1926, Paul Lynde was born. Oh, Sammy!

Folks don't have a Clue what funny is...

My friend eric_mathgeek just posted a survey asking his friends what they thought of the movie Clue. To my surprise and chagrin, there are apparently many people out there who like this movie, who think it's very funny. In fact, there's a skin-crawlingly scary comment Eric reported, that "Someone on my list said almost every gay man he knows thinks it's the funniest movie ever." Well, it's not like I haven't found territory before in which the shibboleths of the gay community somehow escape me... I, who doesn't get the devotion to Cher, who still doesn't understand why we can't hear a Joni Mitchell or an Ella Fitzgerald or even a friggin' Beatles tune in a gay club (unless somebody's raped it with a thumpa-thumpa beat), I who still dress primarily for comfort to the sometime detriment of fashion. I with the hair. But CLUE? To me as bizarre as discovering the overwhelming majority of gay men sleep in three-piece suits and attend business meetings in pajamas.

Anyway, I thought I'd throw this out for my particular Maggotty circle... not for a poll but for more substantive or analytical answers. I know we showed this movie at the Fuckitathon a couple months ago, certainly not by my choice... but I'm curious about a couple of things:

1. Who thinks Clue is funny, and why? What are the funny bits?

2. Do you believe that repeated viewings can turn un-funny movies into funny movies in your consciousness? Is it possible we/I have movies we/I think are hilarious that are really just as dumb and badly written as I find Clue to be? What are examples that might fit that description in your experience?

2a. Are we susceptible to a lingering affection/respect for movies we found funny in our childhood?

3. Name some movies that you think are some of the funniest movies you've ever seen. Can you quantify or describe the humor in these movies such that there's a common element or thread? Or are there many different kinds of funny that you appreciate?

4. Name a movie or movies you have never found funny but most other people seem to.

5. Put these in order of funny (leave out any you don't know): The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, Abbott and Costello, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Our Gang, Burns and Allen.

6. Is The Rocky Horror Picture Show really as stupid as the "oh that's so old what were we thinking" backlash would have it?

Thanks for any insights.