Having just woken up from the mid-90s, British Prime Minister David Cameron has cited a 17-year-old blah-troversy to commission a study on the dangers of exposing our youngsters to mature themes on TV. The morally depraved, nearly two-decades old example he used? Why none other than the vanilla-flavored lesbian smooch from British soap Brookside (pictured).
Now to be fair, Cameron doesn’t want such questionable material banned from TV altogether; he’s no enemy of gorgeous lip-locked women! The study proposes that a simple broadcast ban on inappropriate content like gay kissing before the salacious hour of 9pm would take steps to protect our youth from having to grapple with soul-perplexing queer love.
Mr. Cameron has apparently never heard of DVR. Or the Internet for that matter. The very premise that kids stand to be “protected” from any sort of content by slapping a bed time on it shows a total lack of understanding how young people consume media these days. The only thing TGIF means to someone under the age of 18 is the promise of cheese, grease and more pimples. Cameron need look no further than these pics of Kate Middleton’s younger, cross-dressing brother, James, to see the kind of imagery floating readily around the web for any young person to enjoy, er, consume.
But the shockingly out-dated approach goes further than to timestamp Cameron’s collegiate endeavors, when “new media” was nowhere to be found on any elective sheet. Far more worrisome is that in the year 2011 there are still powerful entities that view representations of queer love as taboo, not worthy of inclusion in the development of young minds, in the construction of new thinkers. And we’re not just talking fringe loonies like Victoria Jackson, but those filling democratically elected national positions. What message does it send the young girl whose heart leaps at this image when her respected leader publicly flags it in the “other” category, only fit for those who fully comprehend subversion?
How about we take this to the next level?
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Kids inevitably dig around subjects that may lie above their levels of complex comprehension. And for that, parents should have control over exposure to things like internet porn and graphic violence. A lesbian kiss does not land remotely close to this realm, and any random sampling of a 6-9pm block of TV will yield countless examples of straight borderline soft-core porn, of violence that if witnessed in real life would require trauma therapy. So please, can we move away from the gay kiss controversy? Pretty soon you’re going to tell me “the Rachel” is back.
Via DailyMail
divkid
i was just about through the first paragraph when i noticed the “via daily mail” tag, which is just as well as it saves me the pain of enduring thoroughly discreditable, frequently incorrect, right wing, cynical alarmist perfidiousness.
i don’t know what the case is in the US, but there’s a reason why british tabloids don’t employ fact checkers – facts get in the way of profits.
divkid
sorry dan, i thought you’d just pasted the article. my bad. i have read it now.
only, the daily mail really are the enemy of progress here in britain. every step of equality has and continues to be an uphill battle against the daily mail, they have an unaccountably powerful and malign influence over the levers of power, whereby every gvnt policy has to pass the daily mail test i.e how it will sit with their cynically misinformed reactionary readers. rant over.
Paul Shetler
this is of a piece with other rear-guard attempts to make gay shows of affection invisible and shameful and will be just as unsuccessful. times really have changed and though the right is casting about looking for new scapegoats, queers who kiss don’t strike most people as a threat to the nation.
sorry dave, but 2011 will be remembered for the SUMMER OF LOVE.
Fagburn
Erm, David Cameron has not commented on the report – it hasn’t been published and we don’t know what it says.
Why are you lifting dumb stories from the right-wing homophobic Daily Mail?
While it’s scary that Cameron’s commissioned a report on “the sexualisation of culture” by someone from the Christian group Mothers’ Union (who have since criticised this article’s inaccuracies) – thus giving their views some approval – we don’t know what it says yet.
A ban on lesbian kisses was given as an example BY THE MAIL of what could be banned with a quote from an unnamed “source” – but it looks like this was put in mainly so they could publish some photos of lesbians kissing…
Because of the author’s background this “independent report” will almost certainly recommend several anti-sex, proscriptive,
censorious measures – it’s also likely it will present representations of same-sexing as scary and somehow corruptive – but it’s simply false to say it has called for a ban on lesbian and gay kisses on TV before the watershed and that Cameron has supported this.
robert in NYC
Fagburn, you’re absolutely right. This is nothing more than yellow journalism expected from the most notorious rag of all, the Daily Mail. I wouldn’t mind betting that awful Melanie Phillips is stoking the fires of intolerance as seen by her recent articles denigrating LGBT people in the UK. I don’t think much will come of this. If a ban has to be imposed on gay kissing until after 9 p.m. then the powers that be would hard-pressed not to ban straights doing the same thing. I would be more than suprised if Cameron acceded to such a ban, no tter the sexual orientation involved.
Jamie Noir
I take exception to the desription of our Prime Minister. I have yet to meet anyone, even a member of his own party, who actually respects David Cameron.
Carsen Tyler
Um… how did this report skip Doctor Who? I mean Captain Jack is pretty damn gay in all the best ways and the Doctor does drop hints that he finds both boys and girls attractive. And Doctor Who is a family show.
Athena
Well, thsi guy needs a time machine, indeed. or he used one, one of the two…
And, ah, what’s ‘a Rachel’? I didn’t get the reference, heh.