5 questions we have about Disney's first explicitly gay character- Zia Bella Blair 7th period

In an interview with "Attitude" magazine, Bill Condon, the director of Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" dropped a bombshell — the film will feature the studio's first-ever explicitly gay character. Condon announced that LeFou — Gaston's obsequious sidekick (played in the movie by Josh Gad) — will be portrayed in the live-action remake as pining for his boss, culminating in an "exclusively gay moment" for the character toward the end of the film. "It's somebody who’s just realizing that he has these feelings. And Josh makes something really subtle and delicious out of it. And that’s what has its payoff at the end, which I don’t want to give away," Condon told "Attitude." On the one hand, it's great that Disney is finally putting an explicit LGBTQ character on screen, even if it has been a long time coming. It's even cooler to know that this is just one of many ways that Disney has updated the classic "Beauty and the Beast" story for a more modern era — including making Belle the inventor, instead of her father. Featuring an LGBTQ character is totally a step forward, and we certainly hope LeFou won't be the last. On the other hand, Condon's statement was vague (albeit intentionally so), and we have some concerns about the decision to make LeFou, of all 1. Will LeFou be just another "gay villain"? The trope of the "deliciously" evil antagonist has been around a long time — as explained incisively by this unsparing stand-up bit from 2011 — and Disney has been a prime perpetrator in advancing it. "The Little Mermaid's" Ursula was explicitly modeled on the famous drag queen Divine; "The Lion King's" Scar is, largely, a bundle of preening, limp-wristed, stereotypes; and "Aladdin's" Jafar certainly sends some mixed signals, to say the least. LeFou isn't the movie's primary villain, but he's unequivocally, definitely on Team Bad. Thus, the studio's first gay character is someone we're primed to pity, laugh at, and root against. Not only is LeFou not a great guy, he's essentially a sideshow — the antagonist's funny sidekick. Will LeFou's apparently sincere feelings for Gaston be played for laughs? LeFou isn't exactly the most three-dimensional character in the Disney canon. In the original animated feature, his appearances are pretty much limited to heinously sucking up to his boss, getting punched in various directions, and generally making a fool of himself. Will his crush on Gaston be treated as a joke — an extension of his comic relief role? And if it isn't, will that just be ... kind of weird? What would that even look like? If LeFou is, in fact, bisexual, as the filmmakers suggest he might be, will it be portrayed as weird or deviant? "LeFou is somebody who on one day wants to be Gaston and on another day wants to kiss Gaston," Condon explained in the interview. It's a quote that suggests LeFou might, in fact, be bisexual or at the very least confused about where he stands. And that's OK! Representation of people who are bi, queer, or simply sexually fluid are also lacking on screen. But LeFou is a clown. Will his confusion be treated as pathetic and odd? We hope not, but given Hollywood's frequent inability to take bisexuality seriously, it's fair to be concerned. Is Gaston and LeFou's romance doomed, as usual? At the climax of the original, animated "Beauty and the Beast," after losing his knock-down drag-out brawl with the Beast, Gaston [26-year-old spoiler alert] falls to his death, much to the delight of children everywhere. Too frequently, romance between gay men on screen isn't allowed to just be. It has to end tragically (cf. "Brokeback Mountain"). Thankfully, that's starting to change (cf. "Moonlight,"), but assuming Disney hasn't reinvented the ending of "Beauty and the Beast," the story of LeFou and Gaston's one-sided romance is going to be the same old tragic gay love story. It's 2017 already. Why did this take so long? True, he does get to sing the movie’s best song (fight me!), but aside from that, LeFou is a pretty marginal character. His primary purpose is to skitter around after Gaston, making a fool of himself. LeFou's name literally translates to “the fool.” This was an article from Upworthiest. I feel these are valid concerns and I hope Disney doesn’t fall into these stereo-types.

Liam Taylor - Aftermath of Racists at a Child's Birthday Party

Summary: Melissa Alford, 47, threw a large birthday party for her 25 year old son, her 6 year old grandson, and another 7 year old in the neighborhood. Things were fine until an armed group, calling themselves "Respect the Flag" showed up and pulled out guns, threatened to shoot, while also exchanging some racist comments. They also had the Confederate flag on their vehicle as well as on themselves, which makes sense seeing as the group was all white, and the party was majority black.

Analysis: This was written Friday, March 3, 2017 (yesterday) but the real event happened about 2 years ago. This article catches up with the family and the group who terrorized the party. Two members of the group were sentenced to 6 and 13 years in jail respectively. Iin an interview with Alford, who threw the party, she still says she lives in fear that it will happen again and that it will go further. To me, this is absolutely disgusting. Unfortunately, it seems as though racism will always exist no matter what, and although we had been coming closer to equality in America, due to the recent election, that's kind of come to a halt.

Synthesis: This whole idea of threatening people with violence due to thinking one race is superior to another is a lot like the KKK restricting African Americans from voting using violence and force which let to Congress passing the Force Act of 1870, which made doing that illegal.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/03/us/douglasville-confederate-flag-birthday-party-children-racist-threats/index.html

Grace Schwall-Trump Advisers Split on Climate Change

     Donald Trump promised to remove the US from the Paris Agreement (an international campaign to slow and prevent further climate change) in his campaign and will make his final decision this week. Some of Trump's administration, notably Ivanka Trump is working to get the US to continue participating in the agreement. The US leaving would not only contribute to damaging the environment, it would be a bad diplomatic decision. Trump also plans to defund many of the programs that the Obama Environmental Protection Agency created that help better our environment. Advocates for environmental protection continue to encourage Trump to continue the EPA and Paris Agreement .

        This article was written by Coral Davenport from the New York Times in order to inform the public of major decisions being made in the government. The idea that global warming is fake or in the far away future is completely unrealistic. Climate Change is occurring now and will only continue to get worse. It is the responsibility of the government to regulate environmental conservation. If the Trump Administration defunds the EPA and continues to ignore the serious  problem will only get worse. The idea of government environmental conservation  began during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. Many at that time were skeptical of the right for the government to be involved in conservation but activists such as John Muir were successful in getting the government to begin conserving the environment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/02/us/politics/climate-change-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Skyler Tepedino - Nearly Two Years After Racists Crashed a Childs Party...

Summary:

 Over a year ago, armed party-crashers drove their trucks into a six year old birthday party. Or when most of them were arrested months later. But, when the two of the ringleaders were arrested, it seemed suspicious to the rest of the community. For the victims of the party, it still isn't over. Melissa Alford, 47, who hosted the July 2015 birthday party still worries that the same crime will happen again to her family. It has affected her whole life, at home and work. "They terrorized us," Alford told CNN. "They pulled out guns and knives, called us racist slurs and they threatened to kill us. And that was terrifying," she states. Alford threw the party to celebrate her son's 25th birthday, her grandsons 6th birthday and another child's 7th birthday. Many of the people who attended were African American. An armed group called "Respect the flag," decided to crash the party with weapons and according to CNN, words were said. This week, Kayla Norton, who loaded a shotgun on the scene, and Jose Torres, who wielded it, were sentenced to six and 13 years in prison. Some of the observers think its too much and Alford thinks it's wrong.

Analysis:

Overall I think this article is , and reading about it makes me think about all the birthday parties I've had or been invited too, and thinking about all the possibilities that could've gone wrong. This could be related back to when cowboys used to barge into places and rob the banks or stores and perform a hit and run. They used to do it all the time and when they did, it was usually a gang, and they all had sone sort of weapon. Now this has made me aware that whenever I have parties from now on, I need to be careful of my surrounding and always keep a lookout  for mysterious and weird things.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/03/us/douglasville-confederate-flag-birthday-party-children-racist-threats/index.html

Lilly Anthony- gluten-free diets

Summary: Many people over the years have done gluten-free diets. However this comes from celiac disease, which is “a digestive disorder in which your body is abnormally sensitive to gluten, a protein component of wheat, rye, barley and crossbreeds of those grains.” Now many Americans, especially in Hollywood, have decided to take on the gluten-free diet. It is known to have many health benefits aside from helping with celiac disease. During World War 2 in the 1940s, people with celiac disease had almost no mortality rate even with the lack of fruits and vegetables. Turns out that flour was made with potato starch and not wheat. In the 1970s, celiac disease was connected through a genetic immune response. Then in the 1980s, the use of describing someone as non-celiac gluten sensitivity is a condition that has the same symptoms of celiac disease but without the immune system damaging the intestines. Europe tended to have few numbers of people with celiac disease, but during the 1990s, U.S. had an extreme number of more people. Many people were curious why there had been little to no celiac disease in the past, but it was ignored until in the 2000s, a researcher note the prevalence of celiac disease in the United States at around 1%.” Then more people saw giving up gluten as beneficial, until the 2010s, where it isn’t helpful for everyone, especially if you don’t have any gluten sensitivity to begin with.

Analysis: This article discusses what a gluten-free diet is and how the history of celiac disease and this diet evolved over time. Most people have probably considered going gluten-free, so this article would be goods to read for information about this. I know many people who have had to live gluten-free and this article really informed me all about this disease. When John Winthrop encouraged Christianity at Massachusetts Bay Colony, there were people who did not support his views which only led to more religious groups with opposing views. Just like Christianity wasn’t for everyone, neither was a gluten-free diet.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/01/health/gluten-free-diet-history-explainer/index.html

Plane Crash Survivor Found in Bedroom- Emma Lochabay

Found in the bedroom of the home that the plane crashed into, one of the three survivors was found today. The home is located in Southern California. The plane went down on Monday near the Riverside Municipal Airport and 90% of her body was covered in third-degree burns. The others three passengers on the plane were killed on impact. In total, four homes were damaged in the crash and two were destroyed. Nobody in the homes were hurt.

I found this article on a popular and trustworthy news website, CNN. I know i can trust this website to not include any bias towards the information published. This article is important because it addresses a scary accident that can hopefully be avoided in the future. It is horrible that there were a few lives lost due to an unknown reason. This event synthesizes to 9/11 in the event that there was a plane crash into a building were there were lives lost. Even though, it is to a much smaller degree, it is still a similar situation.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/28/us/california-riverside-plane-crash-victims-investigation/index.html

Sarah Childs- Hate Groups Spiked in 2016

Summary:  All over the country, flyers are showing up on college campuses.
Some promote blatant neo-Nazi rhetoric, others are much more subtle. They read, "protect your heritage." "Let's become great again." "Our future belongs to us." "White people, do something." "Serve your people." They represent a less extreme white supremacist movement targeting the young and educated. "They learn to downplay the swastikas and get a thesaurus, so instead of white supremacy they use words like identitarian. It's just a repackaged version of white nationalism." On Wednesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based organization that monitors hate crimes across the country, released its report on extremism in America. The report says the number of groups across the country increased in 2016 to 917, up from 892 in 2015. In 2011, SPLC recorded 1,018 active organizations, the highest tally it found in more than 30 years of tracking hate groups. That number had fallen to 784 in 2014. "The country saw a resurgence of white nationalism that imperils the racial progress we've made, along with the rise of a president whose policies reflect the values of white nationalists," Potok noted. The White House did not respond to request for comment.

Analysis: This article was published by Justin Heifetz from CNN on February 16, 2017. The author uses a third person point of view to convey an unbiased article. Additionally, I had a little previous knowledge of these dangers to our nation, so this article made me realize how important our race relations really are. If we could have maintained great relationships while avoiding the use of hate groups, we might have been able to maintain a healthy environment and save many lives. This article was written for any citizen of the US, or the world who want to keep our country safe and hate free. This instance can connect directly to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 19th century. The KKK formed to promote white supremacy just as these groups are rising to do so now. We all need to stick together and stand up for what is right!

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/15/politics/hate-groups-spiked-in-2016/index.html