Anti-bullying teen, 'DWTS,' Gaga get GLAAD award

[March 26, 2012]  NEW YORK (AP) -- A teenager who's campaigning to make it easier for children to see an upcoming documentary about bullying, the producers of the NBC musical drama "Smash" and Lady Gaga were among the winners of Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation media awards announced Saturday.

ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," the popular Spanish-language TV programs "Caso Cerrado" and "Primer Impacto," and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner's recent work "The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures" also were among the honorees recognized at a ceremony in New York. GLAAD is set to present more awards in Los Angeles in April and San Francisco in June.

The awards are designed to honor fair, accurate and inclusive representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

Katy Butler, a 17-year-old from Ann Arbor, Mich., got a special award for gathering more than 400,000 signatures on an online petition pressing the Motion Picture Association of America to lower its R rating for "Bully," a documentary set for release Friday. The MPAA has said language used in the film warrants restricting children under 17 from seeing it without an adult.

Craig Zadan and Neil Meron were honored for their careers, which include producing "Smash" and the films "Hairspray" and "Chicago."

Among awards for specific works, "Pariah," writer-director Dee Rees' movie about an African-American teenager struggling to come out as a lesbian, was named the outstanding limited-release film. Ricky Martin, The New York Times and a Boston Globe story about a transgender teenager and her identical twin brother, written by Bella English, also got laurels in various categories.

Honors for Spanish-language work included awards for episodes of "Caso Cerrado" and "Primer Impacto" and for a story, by Claudia Torrens of The Associated Press, about a Hispanic gay couple planning to marry and become fathers of twins, with the help of a surrogate mother.

[Associated Press]

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