South Korea’s television drama Life Is Beautiful, which airs on the network SBS and centers around a multi-generational family, happens to include a gay couple. Horrors!, right? Well a union of mothers (whose name I couldn’t locate) was so upset with the possibility of people watching the show and turning gay they took out this newspaper ad in the Chosun Journal, which warns: “If my son becomes gay and dies from AIDs after watching Life Is Beautiful, SBS must take responsibility!”
Ads the consortium of supposedly freaked out mommies: “Life Is Beautiful has glamorized the culture of gays against what is realistically, healthy and proper for the citizens of Korea.”
Hong Seok Cheon, a gay Korean television star who came out 10 years ago and is now a proud papa, enjoyed responding on Twitter (in some pretty lengthy tweets, evidently):
‘Take responsibility for my son becoming gay because of the drama?’ What a funny ad, but also quite disappointing. Soon they will be putting out an ad saying don’t hang out with Hong Seok Cheon if you don’t want to be gay. This was the exact reason I was fired from ‘BboBboBbo‘ 10 years ago when I first came out. All of those calls made to the broadcast company asking to take me off the show. If such logic was true, all of those children that were on a part of the show with me should be gay by now, but they aren’t.
The gay couple that is shown on ‘Life Is Beautiful’ is so beautifully and realistically drawn. If there really is a son out there that becomes gay after watching the drama, it is not because he became gay but because he actually was gay and finally earned enough confidence to come out. It could be the drama that gave him that strength to come out to his parents and ask for understanding. How unfortunate for the children that live under the parents that put out such a trashy advertisement. Aids is not a disease specific to gays. How is it that I found out that I was gay 25 years before I saw the drama ‘Life Is Beautiful?’ What kind of dramas did the gays in the 50s, 60s, and 70s watch in order to become gay? Being gay is not a contagious disease, you fools
By the ad’s logic, if your son becomes a whining bigot after watching Glenn Beck, Fox News must take responsibility! After all, that network has glamorized the culture of intolerance.
How about we take this to the next level?
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[AllKPop]
Mark
To paraphrase Rachel Maddow – they’re gonna catch the gay! oh puhleeze…..
AdonisOfFire
How incredibly stupid, they think Gayness is contagious, LOL
Well yeah honey, it is, but only through butt sex.
uu
I think with moms of this sort these kids are going to die of embarrassment.
Bobby in Seattle
Maybe it’s because I see women as the “nurturers” in society, that frankly, I find homophobic, bigoted and racist women to be utterly creepy. It’s just CREEPY to see that much hate confined within the heart of a gender that I expect to be loving and nurturing, even if it were their own child that came out as gay.
C-R-E-E-P-Y!!!!
meego
Are these “concerned mothers” retarded???
jason
This connection between being gay and AIDS is partly the fault of gay activists. In their desire to obtain funds from the government, various gay activists/AIDS charities/advisory bodies/councils have sought to play the gay victim card. No wonder the general population automatically connects the gay orientation with AIDS.
I’m also not happy with the CDC and its linguistic propaganda in how it portrays AIDS as if it’s the fault of the gay orientation. The CDC is doing immense harm to the gay community through its scandalous use of language.
Message to gay activists: keep your victim card to yourselves. I don’t want you representing me or my gay orientation. Fuck off, basically.
Cam
I always think that the people who think “The Gay” is catching must be closeted. Why else would they think that being gay is so attractive that merely seeing it on TV is enough to convince their kids to be gay? Nobody who doesn’t have gay feelings would think that it was so tempting.
Enron
Sounds like a bunch of overbearing mothers, and we all know what society say they are often guilty of turning their sons into…”the gay”.
Markie-Mark
My mother is a much nicer woman than any of these ‘concerned mothers.’ Mothers are supposed to love their children unconditionally. These mothers obviousy do not. Their selfishness should bring them shame. They are poor mothers.
Richard
@jason:
Oh for fuck’s sake, the CDC and gay activists link the disease to homosexuality because we’re 20X more likely to be infected than the general population. The disease affects AT LEAST one out of every five of us, and the infection rate grows yearly. If anyone should stop playing the victim card, its you. How dare you seize upon the hysteria of some stupid Korean housewives as a reason why we in the US shouldn’t have sensible public health programs that benefit populations most at risk?
scott ny'er
Korean housewives thinks people can catch the gayness because they don’t know gay people. And are uneducated. The more gay peeps that are known, not just thru media (but that helps) but thru social networks, the more they’ll get educated by seeing and being part of their lives.
Cassandra
If I watch Koreans on TV . . .
Will I turn into Korean? I hate pickled cabbage.
How much do I have to watch of any kind of tv, to change my race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc?
I used to watch a lot of BBC, but I have not yet become British. Is there something wrong with my television? Maybe John Cleese isn’t really a Brit.
I’ve watched the Simpsons from the start, yet remain three-dimension and my skin is not yellow. Am I sitting too far away from the TV?