His years as a closeted gay man gave actor Ian McKellen an understanding, he says, of Jews who hid during the Holocaust.
“It was horrible living this secret life,” the two-time Oscar nominee says in the current issue of Details magazine. “You could feel a little bit what it was like to be a Jew in central Europe during a certain period. It was horrible.”
The comments generated a few lines of condemnation on the Web site of the conservative Weekly Standard, which headlined one of its posts, “Holocaust Comparisons the Left Is Happy To Countenance.” The piece alleged a double standard among liberals who have criticized opponents of President Obama’s health care plan by likening it to the Nazi genocide.
Whatever the accuracy of his analogy, McKellen may have been drawing on a career that has consistently featured both World War II-inspired roles and characters concealing their true identity. Perhaps best known to moviegoers as Gandalf from “The Lord of the Rings” films, the actor starred 30 years ago in the London premiere of “Bent,” a play about a gay German man who pretends to be Jewish after being sent to a concentration camp. McKellen later gained a mainstream following by starring in the X-Men movies as Magneto, a character warped by his status as a child survivor of the Holocaust.
Open about his sexuality for the past two decades, McKellen also says in Details that he and friends make a practice of tearing out Leviticus 18:22 — the biblical passage that describes homosexuality as an “abomination” — when staying in hotels: “I’m not proudly defacing the book, but it’s a choice between removing that page and throwing away the whole Bible.”
The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, the Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason.
To post a comment, click to login:
Copyright © 2012, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Tearing out the verse doesn't change the Bible. The same chapter of Leviticus prohibits incest and adultery and bestiality. Perhaps some might choose to tear out those verses, but it doesn't make it right.