Many people have come unstuck due to their use of new media, as it allows people to talk straight to the public with no filter. The latest to come under fire is Super and Slither director James Gunn, who’s currently working on Marvel’s big budget Guardians Of The Galaxy superhero movie. He’s now being lambasted for a blog post deemed homophobic and sexist.

Although the post first appeared on his website last year and has now been deleted (it’s still on Google Cache though), it was titled ‘The 50 Superheroes You Most Want to Have Sex With’, and asked people to use Facebook, Twitter and the like to vote for their favourite. It became a hot button topic when blog sites stumbled on it and the criticism has now gone viral.

It’s the language used in the piece that’s gotten many hot under the collar, with websites such as TheMarySue taking Gunn to task for referring to X-Men’s Gambit as a ‘Cajun fruit’, adding that the idea of having a threesome with him and a girlfriend to fulfil the woman’s fantasy, ‘makes me sick to my stomach’.

Gunn added that Tony Stark (aka Iron Man) ‘can turn’ lesbian character Batwoman, and that if she had sex with male character Nightwing (who was formerly Bruce Wayne’s ward, Dick Grayson), she could probably still be considered a lesbian. He also says that The Flash’s inclusion on the list is down to the votes of gay men. He says he doesn’t know why, ‘But I do know if I was going to get f—ed in the butt, I too would want it to be by someone who would get it over with quick.’

As for X-Men’s Kitty Pryde, he says ‘I wanted to anally do her,’ and of 15-year-old mutant X-23, ‘After you fictionally fuck her, fictional police are going to arrest you and put you in fictional jail for being a very real pedophile,’

TheMarySue feels that, ‘What’s wrong is the sheer amount of slut-shaming (on only the female characters) and anti-gay language that Gunn directs towards the majority of the male characters… These are not opinions befitting somebody who’s been given the task of bringing a major part of the Marvel Universe to the big screen.’

As for Gunn’s comments about Batwoman, the site says that the idea that gay people can be ‘cured’ is ‘a delusion at the heart of an innumerable number of rapes.’

The furore has been picked up by the likes of The Hollywood Reporter and has sparked a Change.org petition to have Gunn removed from the director’s chair of Guardians Of The Galaxy, which currently has 4,400 signatures.

While some of Gunn’s comments could simply be passed off as lowbrow, thoughtless ‘humour’, a blog post Gunn has left up on his site suggests he simply doesn’t care about being offensive or the issues his actions raise. The post refers to a song called ‘That Gay Fucking Cat’ that he wrote for his section of the upcoming anthology film, Movie 43.

When it was pointed out to him by the music department that the song couldn’t go out with such a potentially homophobic title, Gunn started a series of rather juvenile e-mails, ostensibly in response to the ‘humorless tone’ of the request for a new title. They’re rather unpleasant, delving into casually racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-disabled alternate titles for the song. Although he’s obviously not being serious, it’s all rather unnecessary, unprofessional, rude and suggests a man who thinks being asked to be more sensitive is reason to be even more unpleasant and difficult, especially as he says early on that neither he nor co-writer Tyler Bates ‘really cared what the song was called’.

He may think it’s all very funny, but when you’re in the Hollywood big leagues you need to be careful what you say, as just because you think something’s only for a laugh doesn’t mean into doesn’t have an impact or repercussions, especially when it delves into casual bigotry.

As yet, Disney/Marvel hasn’t made a comment.

Marty Richards, a much loved stage and film producer, has died aged 80. Richards won an Oscar for bringing Chicago to the big screen, and also steered gay-themed French film hit La Cag Aux Folles to the stage as a Broadway musical. His other credits include Sweeney Todd and Crimes of the Heart.

Richards started out as a child actor, but found parts increasingly difficult to get as he grew older. He eventually turned to producing, raising the money for an Off-Broadway show called Dylan in 1972. Since then he’s won Tonys for La Cage, Sweeney Todd and The Will Rogers Follies. While he had fewer screen credits, along with Chicago he also worked on The Shining and The Boys From Brazil.

The Bronx-born producer was also a noted philanthropist, creating the charity known as Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, as well as working with Meals on Wheels. He also (along with his late wife) established the liver and kidney transplant unit at the NYU Medical Center and created the New York Center for Children to care for abused children and their families.

You can read more about him here.

Mark Indelicato is best known for his role in Ugly Betty, where he played Betty’s camp, fashion-obsessed nephew. Now 18 years old, he’s joined the cast of queer filmmaker Greg Araki’s White Bird (sometime referred to as White Bird In A Blizzard), alongside the previously cast Shailene Woodley, Eva Green, Gabourey Sidibe, Christopher Meloni and Shiloh Fernandez.

The movie is about a young woman who loses control of her life when her mother disappears. Woodley will be playing the main part, but it’s not clear how the other actors will play into the story, although Variety reports that Indelicato will portray an outcast in a middle class school.

Indelicato knows something about that, as he’s previously talked about the death threats and abuse he received when he was playing a teenaged gay character on Ugly Betty, especially after it was widely reported that he himself was gay.

It’s not been revealed if being gay is why his character is an outcast in White Bird, but as Araki brings a very queer sensibility to everything he’s made – from Doom Generation to Kaboom! – we wouldn’t be surprised.

Mary Lynn Rajskub is one of those actresses who you may not know the name of, but you probably recognise her from roles in the likes of 24, Julie & Julia, Sweet Home Alabama and Little Miss Sunshine. When she played a lesbian in Sunshine Cleaning, she admitted to having experiences with women, but it’s comments in her latest podcast that have had people asking more about her sexuality.

In the cast she says, “Recently I went through all my stuff in the entire house and went through everything damaged or unuseful or I don’t love. That’s how I ended up looking through this box of photos and then. Oh! it’s the hot waitress from El Torito Grill. I dated her. Yeah, that happened. I mean I liked my life in the ’90s but I didn’t feel like going back there. The picture of this girl and I, realizing I used to date her and I had blocked it out, shoved it into a black hole of my unconsciousness. There it was staring at me in the face, taunting me. ‘Oh don’t act like you forgot me. Here I am!'”

Now she’s been talking to AfterEllen about it, saying about her sexuality, “It’s weird because i do believe in grey areas, but for some reason, just you saying it’s more fluid, makes me be like ‘No, it’s not!’ because I want to label everything. But the truth of it is, for me and my personality, it is more fluid. It just is.”

As to why she’s happy to talk about it now but has shied away from mentioning female relationships before, “I’m more settled now in my life, which makes me feel — maybe because I’m more secure, I’m more comfortable talking about it. You would think when I was actually having a relationship with a woman or seeing women or having things or whatever, that I would be talking about it.”

As for the relationship she talks about in the podcast, “That was the one where I really made a go of it, in terms of calling it a relationship. I dated quite a few women and tried at different times to be like ‘This is my girlfriend,’ but it never really worked out. … And the story I describe with this woman, unfortunately, it was kind of crazy and that sort of became my barometer so I never really figured out if that was something that, cause it was sort of fueled by this melodramatic, stopping and starting, emotional. She wasn’t out yet and I certainly wasn’t out and I kind of equate my growing up and sort of having more success in my career and then she was in a relationship and then we did meet later, but that was just kind of a messed up relationship, unfortunately.”

If you want to see what else Mary Lynn has to say, head over to AfterEllen.

Joan Collins has had five weddings, so you’d hope she knows a little something about the institution of marriage. But what does the diva – who to some is a gay icon due to her role as Alexis Carrington in 80s soap Dynasty – think about gay marriage?

In an interview with The Advocate, she was initially a little reticent to say, “I’m not one of [those people]. Again, you’re getting into a political situation here, which I really don’t want to get involved in. Obviously, I have so many gay friends. Many of them are married, many of them have children, many of them are in civil partnerships. I also have many heterosexual friends who are in the same situations. It’s up to the individual.”

She was drawn into the question by being asked about the sanctity of marriage in relation to her multiple partnerships, to which she replied, “I don’t really know what that means. Explain to me the sanctity of marriage and I’ll tell you.”

Collins was speaking to The Advocate ahead of her appearance – in the sitcom Happily Divorced, where she plays a thinly-veiled version of herself. The comedy stars Fran Drescher and John Michael Higgins as a couple who, after 18 years of marriage, have to change their lives when he reveals that he’s gay (it’s partially based on Drescher’s own marriage to Peter Marc Jacobson).