Good news for Dustin Lance Black.
The Oscar-winning screenwriter has been re-invited to deliver the May 9 commencement speech at his alma mater, California's Pasadena City College (PCC), after the original offer was nixed, the Pasadena Star-News is reporting.
"[Black] has distinguished himself as a film producer and a champion of equal rights and protections for all regardless of sexual orientation," PCC President Mark Rocha announced during a special April 30 meeting, according to the publication. "The Board of Trustees and college administration deeply respect Mr. Black, his work and his causes. The Board also sincerely apologizes to Mr. Black for any actions that may have caused hurt."
No word yet on whether or not Black, who nabbed the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2008 for "Milk," will accept the new invite. As The Los Angeles Times points out, PCC officials are keeping the possibility that the school's president can invite someone else open.
Black's original invitation was rescinded when PCC's Board of Trustees discovered photos depicting Black and an ex-lover engaged in unprotected sex on the Internet five years ago. At the time, the decision was made so as to not "inflame the college's own sex scandals," according to the PCC Courier.
"With the porno professor and the sex scandals we've had on campus this last year, it just didn't seem like the right time for Mr. Black to be the speaker," Board President Anthony Fellow said. "We'll be on the radio and on television. We just don't want to give PCC a bad name."
Black, 39, fired back at school officials in an April 17 letter published in Out magazine, saying the photos in question depicted "what gay men do when they love and trust each other" and had been "surreptitiously lifted" from his ex-boyfriend's computer without his knowledge.
"In the eyes of anyone who has seen the devastating effects this trespass has had on me personally, creatively and professionally over these many years, in the eyes of my mother and friends who have held me as I've cried, and under the blind scrutiny of the law of this land, I am the victim of this 'scandal,' not the perpetrator," he wrote. "With this cruel act, PCC's Administration is punishing the victim."
In other news, Black made his first official red carpet appearance with boyfriend Tom Daley, 19, at the Inaugural Battersea Power Station annual party in London on April 30.
Black had been romantically linked with the British Olympic swimmer, who came out about his relationship with an unspecified man in December, for some time.
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