Good news (and saucy photos) out of this month’s British GQ — Good news: Cover girl Anne Hathaway is still advocating for LGBT equality. Saucy photos: see for yourself.
In a candid interview, Hathaway said she left Catholicism when her brother revealed that he was gay:
The whole family converted to Episcopalianism after my elder brother came out. Why should I support an organisation that has a limited view of my beloved brother?
Why, indeed.
The LGBT community has a sometimes bewildering relationship with organized religion, especially Catholicism and the Church of Latter-day Saints. Neither organization has made an attempt to hide its homophobia. The Church of Latter-day Saints was the driving force in the passage of California’s Prop. 8. The Catholic Church provided similar resources to overturn marriage equality with Maine’s Question 1. In New York, local Catholic authorities were the most vocal opponents of Governor Patterson‘s gay marriage bill. And The Catholic Archdiocese in Washington D.C. threatened to stop their charity work in the nation’s capitol if a marriage equality bill passed. (It passed.)
Yet despite the incessant bullying, many LGBT activists are scared to push back with equal force. Americans who have taken on the church have not fared well, historically.
Similarly, Hollywood celebrities are often reluctant to vocalize their discontent with organized religion. It is Real America, after all, where movie tickets are sold. Celebs say things like “No H8” and they poke fun at ridiculous, homophobic commercials and they attend rallies and they donate money. All of it helps; we need every straight ally.
It’s just refreshing to see someone with Hathaway’s influence put her finger right on the problem, and call it a problem.
Hathaway went on to say about religion:
So I’m … nothing [no denomination]. F–k it, I’m forming. I’m a work in progress.
That’s very Walt Whitman, right? I’m not just singing poetry because of the photos, am I? [Whitman: Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)]
Another interesting tidbit from the GQ interview is that Hathaway has obviously been paying attention to the way women kiss their co-stars on-screen:
Full-on movie kissing … it’s a totally different experience. But really you have to be Angelina Jolie to pull that off and still look good. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I ain’t no Angie.
If you’re both unattached and you get along, of course kissing in a movie is fun. But you can never get truly deep down and into it. Well, I can’t. Jennifer Garner — now that girl can movie kiss!
I like to study the way women kiss, too — but probably for a whole different reason than Anne Hathaway.
What do you think about Hathaway’s words of support for the LGBT community?
