Roger Ebert, the most famous and popular film reviewer of his time who became the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism and, on his long-running TV program, wielded the nation’s most influential thumb, died Thursday. He was 70.
Ebert, who had been a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, died Thursday at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, his office said. Only a day earlier, he announced on his blog that he was undergoing radiation treatment after a recurrence of cancer.
He was a supporter of marriage equality and in the journal he kept on the Sun-Times website, Ebert devoted an entry to stating his support and questioning President Obama’s hesitation to back gay marraiage. (President Obama has since adjusted his stance and is now a full marriage equality supporter.)
Here’s an excerpt:
In the years since then I’ve known a fair share of gay couples who seemed as established and content as other couples, some more some less. In a society that was slowly outgrowing the traditions of patriarchy and matriarchy, they’d made a lateral move into humanarchy. The idea of them being joined in a civil union was a no-brainer. They’d cast their lot together, shared their duties, had an implicit agreement to stand by each other, and certainly deserved to have their relationship recognized by the state if only for reasons of ownership and inheritance. Everyone had heard of couples who’d been together for years, only for one to be banished from a deathbed by the other’s family. That was cruel.
I interviewed a lot of show business people, and many of them were gay. Despite my mother’s theory, I didn’t always catch on. Rock Hudson’s homosexuality must have been an open secret to all of Hollywood and half of America, but not to me. I interviewed Jodie Foster when she was 12, and she came by herself to lunch at the Old World Restaurant on Sunset, no mother, no press agent. She was mature and confident. She was a charming girl, as anyone who has seen “Freaky Friday” will testify. Did I think then that she was gay? Certainly not Did she? When it became generally known many years later, I can’t say I was surprised. But she made it her own business, and in interviews I make it a practice to never discuss personal matters unless the subject brings it up. A lot of them do. At the end of the day, you get better interviews if you’re a sympathetic listener than an attorney for the prosecution.
Now the idea of gay marriage is much before us. They’ve been made legal in some states. They are fiercely opposed, most often on religious grounds. Politicians find it prudent to play to both sides of the street by saying they “have no opposition to civil ceremonies.” I’m disappointed in Obama for taking that approach. He supports the civil rights but opposes gay marriage while citing his church’s teachings. At least you can’t accuse him of catering to his base. I would have preferred that he’d added that a religious marriage is a matter for each church, but that the state should make no distinction in the matter of a civil ceremony.
