thestar.com

[Michael Douglas] has appeared on Entertainment Tonight as well as in countless interviews, defending the film's politics. Queer Nation, a radical gay rights group long angry about Hollywood's depiction of gays and lesbians, has threatened to infiltrate this year's Academy Awards (they tried last year, unsuccessfully, to get their demonstration on television) and protest against Basic Instinct, and homophobic/sexist attitudes in films.

Now, with the advent of Queer Nation, and our gay community's ability to turn around those AIDS statistics (safe sex does work!) gay men and lesbian women are banding again to fight homophobia. AIDS itself, though on the one hand a real medical problem, has found a more profound reality in our culture as a metaphor for the "good" and the "bad," the "clean" and the "unclean."

Unfortunately, Basic Instinct is such a good film you can't spoil the plot. However, every time someone makes an anti- gay joke, or even a mildly homophobic movie, they (perverse though it may seem) do a little something to solidify gay culture, to force us to unite and fight, to focus our anger.