Frank Miller: Batman's Sexualilty, Anti-Homophobia

This is a rebuttal to ignorant claims on the internet that Batman writer Frank Miller is some homophobe.  Frank Miller actually explained in an interview with Christopher Sharrett for an essay called Batman and the Twilight of Idols: An Interview with Frank Miller (1991), "Two-Face is identical to Batman in that he's controlled by savage urges, which he keeps in check, in his case, with the flip of a coin. He's very much like Batman. The Joker is not so much a Doppelganger as an antithesis, a force of chaos. Batman imposes his order on the world; he is an absolute control freak. The Joker is Batman's most maddening opponent. He represents the chaos that Batman despises, the chaos that killed his parents... The Joker actually wears lipstick. He calls Batman 'Darling'...Batman isn't gay. His sexual urges are so drastically sublimated into crime-fighting that there's no room for any other emotional activity. It’s not because he’s gay, but because he’s borderline pathological, he’s obsessive. He'd be much healthier if he were gay." (Reprinted in the book Postmodernism & a Sociology (1997) by Stanford M. Lyman). books.google.com/books?id=CnMo…

A true homophobe wouldn't say anyone would be "much healthier if he were gay." Homophobes say being gay is either an unhealthy mental problem or a sinful choice. 

Frank Miller, in the letters page of the 300 (1998) series, replied to accusations of homophobia from a reader regarding the Spartans saying the phrase "Those boy-lovers": "If I allowed my characters to express only my own attitudes and beliefs, my work would be pretty darn boring. For the record: being a warrior class, the Spartans almost certainly did practice homosexuality. There's also evidence they tended to lie about it. It's not a big leap to postulate that they ridiculed their hedonistic Athenian rivals for something they themselves did. 'Hypocrisy' is, after all, a word we got from the Greeks. What's next? A letter claiming that, since the Spartans owned slaves and beat their young, I do the same? The times we live in." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300_(com…

Frank Miller explained about 300 in 2010, "The approach was to tell this story the way the Spartans told it around the campfire. That’s the reason they were fighting against 80-foot elephants and that’s why Xerxes was portrayed as a much larger-than-life figure." With Xerxes (2014), the point of view shifts to the Athenians — and Spartans are in fact mocked often throughout the course of the story, Miller says. With the new vantage point and a wider, deeper portrait of Xerxes, might Miller be apologizing? "That’s nonsense," Miller said. herocomplex.latimes.com/movies…

In 1972 Batman co-creator and original author Bill Finger explained about Batman, "I knew many homosexuals, but I certainly didn’t think of Batman in those terms. I thought of it in terms of Frank Merriwell and Dick Merriwell, his half-brother, who was the kid he was taking care of. Certainly there’s no homosexual relationship. It was just that the author realized that you’ve gotta have somebody to talk to. A sidekick. Sherlock Holmes had Watson—were they homosexuals? Baloney. You just can’t have your hero walking around thinking aloud all the time. He’d be ready for the men in white coats after a time. So we created a junior Watson and that’s all Robin was." 
noblemania.blogspot.com/2012/0…

In 2010 Batman writer Denny O'Neil said about Batman, "If you think being gay is a bad thing, which I don’t, I would say Batman is worse – I would say he’s asexual." www.walruspublishing.com/featu…

When Batman began in 1939/1940-1941 in the comic books, while creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane still had control, Batman had flirtatious sexual innuendo with Catwoman (Batman saying "Quiet or poppa spank" to her, "Lovely girl," "Nice night for romance," and kissed her, and let her go free instead of having her arrested) and had girlfriends Julie Madison, Linda Page, etc. and Robin was only an 8 years old kid that just liked to fight.

The gay jokes about Batman and Robin were popularized by homophobic author Fredric Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent in 1954, producer William Dozier's campy Batman TV show in the '60s and director Joel Schumacher's Batman Forever/Batman & Robin films in the '90s. The gay appearance of Batman and Robin began when the Batman comic books began being censored in the 1940s and 1950s by DC editor Whitney Ellsworth's Editorial Advisory Board in 1941 trying to make Batman as wholesome as possible to remove sexual innuendo with a rule that "The inclusion of females in stories is specifically discouraged. Women, when used in plot structure, should be secondary in importance." It was intended to protect DC from people attacking comic books as inappropriate for kids by having DC comics "clean." A German psychiatrist and author named Fredric Wertham wrote a book bashing comic books called Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 where he said Batman and Robin seemed like "two homosexuals living together." The popular satirical William Dozier/Adam West "Batman" Batusi TV show of the '60s lampooned Batman for laughs by portraying Batman and Robin sliding down the Batpoles, always together, and showing no flirtatious interest in Catwoman, or Batgirl. Director Joel Schumacher was gay and portrayed Batman and Robin with nipples on the costumes, ass screen shots, an adult man Robin, saying "Were not just friends, we're partners." And then they hold hands. Batman co-creator Bob Kane's opinion of the costumes became a running joke with the film crew. Bob Kane roamed the set of Batman Forever muttering, "Why do we have to have nipples on the Batsuit? Why is Robin wearing an earring?" And then there was the Ambiguously Gay Duo parody of Batman and Robin on Saturday Night Live. There is also the "slash fiction" written by feminists amused at portraying heterosexual male heroes so out of character as emasculated and having gay sex. Tim Burton commented during the Batman DVD commentary, "That was the thing, number one, no Robin. I even think that Bob Kane was happy there was no Robin. And all the jokes that come with it. As a kid that's just a part of the mythology is the Batman and Robin jokes. So I thought I'd just avoid all that." Writer Alan Grant stated, "Denny O'Neil, everybody all the way back to Bob Kane… none of them wrote Batman as a gay character."