“Homosexual activists” are at it again. Just when you thought it was safe to watch prime-time TV, gay propagandists have taken the airwaves and are doing everything they can to make teenagers gay.
At least that’s what Brent Bozell wants you to believe. This isn’t surprising, of course, since Bozell is the president of the Media Research Center, an organization that purports to seek “balance” in the media, but that really seeks dominance of Christian-conservative views. Bozell blasted gay teen characters on TV in a recent column, writing, “If anyone doubts that our entertainment industry and our entertainment media are evangelists for a revolution of sexual immorality (or in their lingo, ‘progress’), he needs only to read the latest cover story in Entertainment Weekly, a ‘special report’ on gay teen characters on TV.”
The EW cover features “Glee” actors Chris Colfer and Darren Criss, who play boyfriends on the show. Bozell is especially rankled by a scene that appeared in a “Glee” Christmas episode.
“Their most controversial scene was the two private-school boys singing ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ to each other on the Fox show,” Bozell writes. “The magazine touted this was the hottest-selling track on the ‘Glee’ Christmas album, which gives you a flavor of Hollywood’s reverence for that holy day.”
Bozell also notes that Colfer told EW, “That was the gayest thing that has ever been on TV, period.”
Full disclosure: I have never watched “Glee.” I have no interest in it and I have myriad other ways to waste my time and life, thank you very much. But I obviously had a journalistic duty to watch the so-called “gayest thing that has ever been on TV.” And so I watched the clip on YouTube. And I have to say, I can understand Bozell’s concern. I mean, what on earth is Kurt (Colfer) doing with his tongue in this scene? Dude, you’re singing, you’re not eating an ice-cream cone. Put your tongue back in your face. And all of the coy eye rolling. Yuck. I don’t understand why Blaine (Criss) wants him to stay. Colfer won a Golden Globe for this schmaltz?
Of course, Bozell’s problem isn’t with “Glee’s” quality of acting or the cheesiness of sentiment, but with the show’s inclusion of gay characters, specifically gay teens. This is, of course, the opposite problem I have with the show. I’m all for positive portrayals of gay teens on TV. I have no doubt that there are kids out there who watch Kurt and Blaine and, as a result, feel like they aren’t alone and that they’re OK. And that’s great.
Or terrible, if you’re Bozell. The EW story was nothing but propaganda, he says, because EW didn’t ask people like him — people who have had unfettered dissemination of their antigay rhetoric for far too long — to talk about how horrible gay people are.
“If this magazine weren’t so earnestly in the tank, the story could come with a disclaimer: ‘This issue is an advertisement bought and paid for by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation,’” Bozell writes.
Of course, Bozell believes that teenagers are only a stepping-stone to the real goal: babies.
“Parents should understand that their young children are the next propaganda targets,” he warns.
Oh, please. As if two gay teenagers singing a corny holiday song to each other on TV is just a stepping-stone to mandatory viewings of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in kindergarten classrooms across the nation. And even if it that occurs it wouldn’t make kids gay. It might, however, make them a little more sassy.
D’Anne Witkowski has been gay for pay since 2003. She’s a freelance writer and poet (believe it!). When she’s not taking on the creeps of the world, she reviews rock ’n’ roll shows in Detroit with her twin sister.