Engaging Debate

  Less than halfway into September, the month is already shaping up to be a busy one for high-profile Hollywood couples.  On Tuesday, the latest issue of Vanity Fair hit newsstands nationwide, offering the long-awaited first glimpse of Tom and Katie’s baby, Suri.  But there is no need to devote another column-inch to the world’s most publicized baby, so we won’t.

  On the other hand, and in other celebriduo news, the October issue of Esquire (which graces newsstands next Tuesday) offers a story that is, in my opinion, genuinely interesting.  In a bold step of social activism, Brad Pitt told the men’s monthly that he will consider marrying Angelina Jolie when everyone in America is free to marry.  “Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able,” Pitt said.  In a surprisingly clever turn of the tables, Pitt artfully shifted the pressure that he has received from rumor-happy tabloids and starry-eyed Brangelina enthusiasts to our beloved legislators.  The Pitt-Jolie wedding is in their hands now.

  Granted, this isn’t exactly Martin Luther King calling for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but it is an important social statement in its own right.  Pitt has politicized the issue; perhaps some of Angelina’s activism is rubbing off on him.  Of course, Jolie is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency.  Since being appointed to the position in 2001, she has become the leading celebrity activist in the entertainment industry—a move that, irrefutably, turned her career around.  Jolie went, seemingly overnight, from being a misunderstood freak whose behavior generated the most obnoxious rumors, to the international darling of humanitarian circles, the sweetheart of the entire world.

  A statement like the one that Brad gave Esquire wouldn’t be as powerful if it hadn’t come from such a high-profile couple.  It wouldn’t be such big news.  Case in point: last November, Charlize Theron made a similar statement.  “We came up with a new idea that we said that we would get married the day that gays and lesbians can get married—when that right is given to them,” Theron said, regarding her relationship with longtime boyfriend Stuart Townsend.  “We've decided that we're gonna use that in a positive way, so the day that law gets passed, then we'll get married."  The difference is, quite frankly, that no one cared.  Sure, they pretended to.  But c’mon—honestly.  Charlize Theron and her no-name boyfriend?

  In fact, I would argue that no other celebrity couple could pull off a stunt like this.  If Tom and Katie tried it, it would surely be perceived as more of Cruise’s couch-hopping craziness.  Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins couldn’t do it, because they’re never getting married anyway.  It had to be Brad and Angelina, whom the world has to see married…someday.

  Like it or not, agree with them or not, the position that they are taking is an important one.  It’s a civil rights issue.  It’s a human rights issue.  And if it’s a publicity stunt, even that’s okay.  Because what was the Montgomery Bus Boycott if not a publicity stunt, for all the right reasons?

-From Pulse
   September 14, 2006