Homosexuality

For about 48 hours in December, Kevin Hart was slated to host the 2019 Academy Awards. Then Hart was called out for homophobic jokes and tweets he made in 2010, and the Academy asked him to apologize.

Hart insisted that he already had apologized. Finally, after some back and forth, Hart stepped down from hosting, saying he didn't want to be a distraction.

Hudson lived a double life as a Hollywood heartthrob and a closeted gay man. Biographer Mark Griffin says Hudson's death from AIDS in 1985 was a turning point in public awareness of the epidemic.

Allison Janney has been nominated for Emmys for her roles on Masters of Sex and Mom. She says her relationships with her family members helped inform her characters. Originally broadcast Aug. 4.

Blanco, who read his poem "One Today" at Obama's second inauguration, is the first immigrant, Latino and openly gay poet chosen to read at an inauguration.

Screenwriter Mike White and his father, gay rights activist Mel White, recently danced, ran and bobsledded around the globe as part of The Amazing Race. The duo talks about their relationship and reality-TV adventures.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first female bishop to preside over the Episcopal Church, has faced a number of crises since she accepted the post in 2006. At least one diocese has seceded in response to the ordination of the denomination's first openly gay bishop, and more may follow.

Brian Whitaker is the Middle East editor for the British newspaper The Guardian, and his new book is Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East. Whitaker also runs the al-Bab Web site, which aims to provide Arab cultural and political information to non-Arabs.

Edmund White has been writing about gay culture in fiction and nonfiction since the 1970s. He has a new autobiography, My Lives. White is director of the creative writing program at Princeton University.

Film critic David Edelstein reviews the new German film Head-On about a marriage of convenience in Hamburg between two troubled Turks. It won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin International Film Festival