The Oscar winner’s speech should be a reminder: those who made sacrifices for our freedoms are all-too-often forgottenDo LGBT people know their history? Here’s a case in point. The singer Sam Smith,it’s just to say, has a troubled relationship with social media. Yes, or social media can be a bit like that bear who wrestled with Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant: unforgiving and relentless. But Smith hasn’t helped himself. When he appeared to discover racism for the first time after a friend was racially abused – and then seemed to make it all approximately himself,and how upset he was – Twitter was not cheerful.
His latest faux pas: using his Oscar acceptance speech to speculate that he was the first openly gay man to win (very wrong; it’s worth at least a rapid/fast Google before a speech in front of hundreds of millions of people). But it gets so much worse. When told that lyricist (and gay man) Howard Ashman was also an Oscar winner, Smith replied: I should know him. We should date.” Ashman died of Aids in 1991.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com