PHOTO: A recent selfie photo of Jack Baker and Michael McConnell was shown by Oprah Winfrey as she expressed her amazement over how "brave" they had to be in the 1970's to fight for the right to gay marriage. After Oprah's other guests mentioned the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts in 2004 as being an inspiration for their own marriages, Oprah mentioned the history of the U.S. Supreme Court gay marriage case brought by Jack Baker in 1972 and also showed video clips and photos of their marriage ceremony and appearance on the David Susskind Show. (See all of this approximately 35 to 36 minutes into the show "Oprah's Next Chapter: Gay in Hollywood," Season 2, episode 41, (2013) on Oprah Winfrey Network as seen 9-10PM PT on Corvallis Comcast Cable channel 220 OWN Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. (See previous posts CA Prop 8 documentary mentions Baker's 1970 gay marriage case (8/28/13) and PQ letter on Jack Baker gay marriage activism vs. Steve Endean political goals (8/2/13))
Oprah's OWN cable channel featured this new episode of her show at the end of an entire day of gay-related programs, starting with a 4:30-6:30 PM rerun of her interview with Lady Gaga on being bullied for her gender variance. This was followed from 6:30-8:00 PM with Oprah's interview of Jason Collins, the first professional NBA ball player to come out as gay while still playing, and his non-gay straight twin brother. Then from 8-9 PM was a rerun of Oprah's interview of Neil-Patrick Harris, a former child TV star, who had been outed as being gay in 2006 by blogger Perez Hilton, along with his husband, David Burtka, who are both now fathers of twins. After the "Gay in Hollywood" episode ended, the OWN channel ran the documentary film "Bride Groom" by Linda Bloodworth Thomason from 10 PM to Midnight -- I have not had a chance to watch it yet, but I might blog about in the future.
I had not watched Oprah in years and so I had forgotten how every thing she does is filled with drama, heart, emotion and sometimes tears. Therefore, it was quite a compliment to Jack Baker that she would mention his story because it seems so boring, non-dramatic and analytical engineer-like compared to the usual human interest stories done by Oprah. I normally am not attracted to such a tear jerker style of programming, but I have to admit that all of the shows mentioned above were so well done that I watched them and the time seemed to fly by quickly because I was so absorbed in the stories.
