For the first time in quite a while, we’re thinking about GLAAD. Or, rather, GLAAD has us thinking, which is even more rare.
The gay media watchdogs released an angry statement yesterday condemning cable network FX for not including a disclaimer with anti-gay activist Peter Sprigg’s outlandish comments about the “homosexual lifestyle.” The comments come on tonight’s episode of 30 Days, which is basically a longer version of Wife Swap, on which a woman against gay parenting goes to live with – you guessed it – a gay dad. Shenanigans and bigotry ensue. And that makes GLAAD sad:(
FX has since released their own statement insisting they’ve done no wrong:
“The comments made by Peter Sprigg… show that not only do same-sex parents like Dennis and Tom face bigotry and ignorance from individuals like Kati, but that they also face discrimination and marginalization from organizations like the FRC,” the statement reads.
“Much of the series’ strength is the willingness to let people of divergent views speak for themselves… and a willingness to trust that the audience will figure out for themselves where the truth lies.”
Even one of the episode’s gays didn’t mind FX’s inclusion of the Sprigg remark.
How about we take this to the next level?
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We’re inclined to agree with FX’s argument, but we can also see some Americans interpreting Sprigg’s statement as fact. Here it is again: “Homosexuality is associated with higher rates of sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse, and those are all reasons for us to be concerned about placing children into that kind of setting.” If it’s on TV, it must be true!
So, should FX have noted that Sprigg is, well, a raving lunatic, or is GLAAD simply making a stink? And, if they are just making a stink, could it be because their Media Awards are airing on Bravo this Friday? Will this scandal give 30 Days a ratings boost? Finally, is God a publicist?
Here’s the video of the controversial clip. Thanks Joe.My.God!
The Banania Blogger
I think that FX’s point is correct.
If “30 Days” is trying to present something that seems fair in order to change minds about the other side, it can’t do so by bracketing all anti-gay sentiments before they get stated.
In fact, it could even make it seem all the more crazy that he would be saying these things about parents the audience has just witnessed being good parents.
J
It would have been nice of FX to post a little diddy about the views of the people involved not being their own – but they have every right not to!
The fact is – who ends up looking worse, the guy crying over the guy making the sandwich for the lunch, or the guy feeding his children.
Scott
In my opinion, FX should have provided a counter-point or at least a little background on Sprigg … as well as the whiny c*nt who followed him with her own one-sided story. They were presented as “experts”, so Joe Schmo in Bumfuck, Idaho is going to swallow their every word as fact.
GLAAD was absolutely right.
crazylove
Agree balancing could have occured in different ways. The fact FX is pretending there was only one way that could have addressed the issue is defensive posturing on their part. A disclaimer at the begining may have done the trick or better yet, talk to actual experts. Much of the stuff they allowed to go unchallenged could be easily discredited. To middle America it makes it seem like these views are correct because there was no attempt to balance them. They f’ed up.
Andrea
If you’ve ever seen “30 Days”, you’ll know that everyone on the show, participating in the experiment, gives their views on the situation. The whole point of the show is to force people to face their own discriminatory practices by humanizing the very things they hate.
30 Days already did a similar switch with a Michigan Militia-esque farm boy who got sent to San Fran to live with a gay man. He had many religious arguments and even went to talk to the pastor at the gay church. He learned and grew. He went to Pride.
fredo777
I’m leaning toward Scott’s views on the issue. Balance.
dvlaries
My only other true encounter with a “reality†show, where I genuinely watched an hour start to finish, was an episode of the first incarnation of CBS’s Big Brother, in 1998 or 99. What I saw last night on FX’s 30 Days did not worry me that I’d missed a decade of fantastic television.
At the outset and set up, host Morgan Spurlock ( Super Size Me ), tells us “We found a woman who strongly believes that gay and lesbians shouldn’t raise kids, and she’s willing to put those beliefs to the test.â€
She did no such thing, and we saw nothing of the kind. Before “Katie†even left California for Michigan, her mind was made up and closed with no room left for ambiguity, if any ever lived in that head at all. Who needs nuance and ability to deal with life’s gray areas when you have never-darken-my-door certainty? Before departing voluntarily -for a mere month- to stay with and observe a warm, male gay couple and their happy, obviously well-adjusted and self-possessed kids, Katie’s teary goodbye to her own family would no less befit someone starting 30 days in the clink on a DUI conviction.
Katie, a devout Mormon, tells us before departing for Michigan, she doesn’t consider herself a spokesperson for her church, yet in the same breath, “but the church is everything to me.†It’s certainly everywhere in every answer she gives the adoptive gay parents she subsequently meets. I’m hearing-impaired and the program was captioned, but even it hadn’t been, Katie’s body language alone, with no sound at all, would have told me things were going nowhere. In key scenes her posture is puddle-eyed and defensive, angry, put-upon or dismissive, as when she’s listening to the officiator at the gay couples’ church.
I’m not convinced the program will likely change fixed opinions on either side of the question of gays adopting children, but it still had worth as a startling examination of how thoroughly religious orthodoxy can make itself the enemy of rational and logical thinking, even in an individual 41-years-old. When confronted with otherwise peaceable people of similar age and experience -who happen to be gay- all Katie can do is form answers that would obviously please her church and never threaten her with being dis-fellowed or made an out-worlder, or whatever the term is for those fallen folks that the Mormon church has withdrawn the welcome mat. Katie still seems to operate as well from that dead and outdated school that believes gay is something one “chooses to be,†leaving her all the less ready to grapple with the far more complicated adoption issue.
She is forthright in showing how upset she is at the notion that children might be taught and learn, from their very formative years, that ‘gay’ isn’t wrong. What’s the alternative? Passively allow homophobia to embed and the faggot jokes first, then half-heartedly and hypocritically later, teach them, ‘no, that’s not nice?’
When asked by one of the adoptive fathers, “How do you know that you are right and that other religions haven’t got it right?†Katie replies, “I have prayed about it and I have received an answer.†Note well, that “God’s answer†is, and typically so, one that not only comfortably falls in line with the conclusion Katie had already drawn, but the one that pleases her Mormon upbringing as well. I would like to ask Katie, “when you learned that you couldn’t have children naturally yourself, how did you know that wasn’t God saying you weren’t meant to be a parent at all, but to get yourself out there on the adoption lists?â€
It isn’t fair to say that Katie draws no sympathy, though she probably wouldn’t welcome the kind she does. It is painful to watch someone of her years, strait-jacked as she is by church doctrine, so threatened by change, hobbled of real ability to open her mind.
As for the tragic Family Research Council’s spokesperson Peter Sprigg and his remarks that got GLAAD’S shorts in a knot, don’t worry so much until Sprigg gets himself a more serious haircut or wig or whatever that was going on atop his beaner.
The national level commercials of the program were rife with liquor plugs and, in my Washington D.C area, the local cutaway ads were for grubby quick-loan outfits ( “CashPoint, 1-888-EZ-BUCKS, no credit check, cash in moments†). I’m not sure who FX thinks is their target audience for the program, but I’m looking forward to recusing myself from their number.
If there was anything gladdening about the program, it was in seeing that host Spurlock regained his figure and his health after damn near killing himself, deliberately gorging on a month’s worth of McDonald’s shit, in the effort that earned him his documentarian bones.
Alan down in Florida
Since DVLARIES and I seem to be the only ones who actually saw the program, I am outraged that Katie was the one who comes off as the aggrieved party here. She’s upset that they can’t all part friends and gets mad when called on her erroneous assumptions, crying when the reality of the truth before her eyes varies from what she “knows” in her heart. She did teach me why (fundamentalist) Mormons are polygamists. If the rest of those women are as judgmental, non-compassionate and self delusional as Katie I can understand why Mormon men wouldn’t want exclusive monogamy.
Katie was a closed-minded, bigoted individual. A sheep in wolf’s clothing who must follow what her religion tells her because her religion is a moral house of cards that collapses if you question it at all. She gets what she deserves.
Cait
I’m a hetero Catholic living in the Deep South, and I didn’t find Kati sympathetic at all. I ached for the Patricks – particularly Dennis, who had hoped that just by spending time with them, she’d see the happy home they were providing these kids in need.
Instead of listening and asking questions, she seized every opportunity to be rude, passive-aggressive and close-minded, content only when she was promoting her no-gay-adoptions-and-fostering agenda.
I turned to my fiance and said, “Dude, she’s a flat-out, stone-cold bigot with ugly highlights.”
His response? “Did you see that one very calm woman just shred her with a few uninflammatory sentences at the barbeque? That tells you everything you need to know about Kati.”
topsyturvy8
What I thought was interesting was that no one brought up that Katie and her husband have two adopted sons. If she has such a strong religious believe in terms of God and the Bible I wonder if this means she and hubby aren’t having sex. Doesn’t the Bible say that sex is for procreation only? So are they unable to have children? Is that why they adopted?
chuck
June 25, 2008
Mr. Peter Sprigg
Vice President For Policy
Family Research Council
801 G Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
Dear Mr. Sprigg,
Once again, you have opened your big mouth without putting your brain in gear, and stuck your foot squarely into it. I guess practice makes perfect?
And, once again, I feel the need to stand up and challenge your unfounded, reprehensible claims, lies and distortion of facts for which you and your organization have become so infamous.
This is what you said on last night’s airing of 30 Days on FX.
“Homosexuality is associated with higher rates of sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse, and those are all reasons for us to be concerned about placing children into that kind of setting.†If it’s on TV, it must be true!
I am trying very hard to think of other sins with which to charge homosexuals but you seem to have covered all of the bases quite well on your own. I do thank you, however, for not blaming us, like Pat Robertson and so many others of your ilk have, for being the cause of Katrina, earthquakes, landslides, famines and other natural catastrophes around the world. I’ve always wondered why so many straight people had to suffer and die for our actions? But, I digress.
Not to undermine what you did say, those are still pretty powerful charges and damning statements to be making against any minority group. While there is no credible scientific research that backs your claim – and much that disputes it – the episode presents your assertion as if it were fact and offers no credible social science experts or child health authorities to challenge your assertion.
Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the Child Welfare League of America, and many other child health and social services authorities who support parenting by qualified lesbian and gays parents dispute your claim.
Permit me to ask you, Sir. What has any LGBT person ever done to you personally that has compelled you to become a man on a mission with respect to putting the LGBT community down at every possible opportunity?
How would you like it, if the LBGT community were to get on national TV and make such outrageous statements about the heterosexual community? Surely, there would be no lack of qualified heterosexuals who would be deserving of the lambasting you just gave the homosexuals community. And were we to state that we are concerned about placing children into that kind of setting, would we be anymore justified than you?
Or, better yet, why don’t you get on national TV and make similar assertions about black people, Muslims, Jews or any other groups of people who do not meet with your favor? You’d be taken down so fast that your head would spin. But, as long as it is open season on the LGBT community, people like you will continue to have a field day at the expense of others. It must, indeed, be nice to be on a higher rung of the pecking order.
Your Jesus and your God must be shaking their heads in disbelief at the blatant lies, misconceptions and open hatred and bigotry that you and the Family Research Council are propagating. That people like you actually believe that you are going to heaven to sit at the side of your creator after what you have done here on earth is simply mind-boggling. People like you have to be drunk or on drugs to be able espouse such colossal bs.
How arrogant of you to criticize the children of your God. With your ugly comments, you have just slapped your creator and savior in the face.
Be very, very proud of yourselves because it is the only approval you will ever get for your sinful words and actions.
Sincerely,
Space Ghostess
Ok, I have a problem with the testimonial of Dawn “I had shitty parents so I guess I’ll blame my gay dad” Stefanowicz.
First off she claims that at 10 MONTHS OLD she remembers her father bringing home one of his partners & that she was aware that there was homosexual activity going on.
Really Dawn? At 10 months old? Do you also remember coming out you mother feet first you crazy twat? And you knew what homosexuality was before a year old? Those Baby Einstein tapes cover everything!
Could it be that you just had shitty parents, or at least a shitty dad, whose sexuality is irrelevant? Do you perhaps have a disgruntled & scorned mother who told you these things which you falsely attribute to a very keen memory? I wonder.
I usually like this show, but did they seriously include that?
Twain
Great point Topsyturvy8, hypocrisy abounds.