By Robert Davidson, AFA Journal news editor
September 1996 – Flick…Channel 4, Roseanne. This looks pretty good.
Flick… Nope. I’ll just flip over to Wings on Channel 7. Boy, remote controls are great. I never have to get up. All the entertainment I could ever want is right here in my easy chair.
And that’s exactly where an influential clique of network TV writers want their viewers – lapsed into a TV coma, eager to lap up the gospel of gayness, a message evangelized nightly through storylines written by openly homosexual writers who dominate the staffs of some of the top rated shows on television.
The joke’s on you
Situation comedies are the preeminent spot to find homosexual scribes. “In short, when it comes to sitcoms, gays rule,” writes David Ehrenstein in the May, 1996, issue of Los Angeles magazine. Friends, Seinfeld, Murphy Brown, Roseanne, Wings, Mad About You – the list goes on – all can claim a homosexual member on the writing staff.
“So much of television has to do with the politics of sexual relationships…the gay community has always had a delightful sense of sarcasm about sexual mores,” says Phil Hartman of the NBC show NewsRadio. With the overwhelming number of homosexuals putting words into the characters’ mouths, it’s no surprise that gay characters are cropping up more and more in prime-time. The Crew, High Society, Roseanne all presented recurring homosexual characters while NBC’s blockbuster lineup of Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, and The Single Guy all spent one Thursday evening addressing the theme of straight people mistaken for gays.
Writer Jamie Wooten, who helped create The Crew, finds it unheard of that the show would not have a gay character – especially since eight of the show’s 11 writers are gay. “To write a show about flight attendants and not have one of them be gay would be a sin,” said Wooten in the Ehrenstein Los Angeles article.
Riding the coat tails
Homosexual activists cry persecution when the majority of America sits up and objects to their call for special rights. Gays try to draw comparisons to the Jewish and black struggles to secure a foothold in Hollywood. Some point to the series Seinfeld as the latest breakthrough moment for Jewish presence in the content of series television and hope to mimic that path for homosexuality. “It’s the same with Seinfeld,” says openly gay comedy writer Robert Horn. “That show has touched a nerve in all sorts of people. But if you did a show today where the humor was as specific in its gayness as that show is in its terms of its Jewishness, I don’t think it would get on the air.”
Film director Mel Brooks sees it differently, drawing a line of progression from Jews in comedy in the ’50s, to blacks and Richard Pryor in the ’70s, to the current homosexual push of the ’90s. “Homophobia is being broken to pieces by these really smart, gay comedy writers. I can see a gay sitcom being done on the networks probably sooner than later.”
What’s the problem?
So what if gay themes appear more and more often on television? According to the Family Research Council, 63% of the Generation X (18 to 30-year-olds) say television in part influences teenage sex. U.S. News and World Report offers a higher figure claiming that 90% of young people are drawn into teen sex because of television. That’s a prime target for a group that has to recruit to keep its numbers. Because of the very definition of homosexuality, natural reproduction is a biological impossibility.
The NBC show Friends is a prime showcase for the gay writers and the homosexual community at large. Nielsen ratings show it is one of the most popular offerings among adults 18 to 49. Those viewers were exposed to a lesbian wedding during this past season, and episodes that are regularly gay friendly.
“Friends is a nine o’clock show that’s on at eight,” says co-creator Marta Kauffman. “I can understand those people who don’t want to let their kids watch it.”
I’m not a straight man, but I play one on TV
While writers can slip gay issues and themes into the scripts, openly gay actors can do more to bring the homosexual influence in Hollywood center stage. Sitcoms also lead the way here. Actor Dan Butler brings his gay lifestyle to a heterosexual character on Frasier, while Patrick Bristow is a homosexual actor playing a homosexual role on the sitcom Ellen. Bristow makes no pretensions that his role on television has designs on influencing society at large. “There’s so much more to our community, and I think it all has to be accepted and celebrated and have its room,” said Bristow in an interview with The Advocate, a leading homosexual magazine.
Another gay actor with an interesting scenario is Richard Fleck, who plays on the ABC show Murder One. Fleck tries to downplay his sexuality because he’s worried about how the audience would respond and how Hollywood casting directors will react, a curious concern if homosexuality is as normal as the pro-gay forces would have America believe.
The wolves in sheep's clothing
Since many closet gay actors aren’t willing to trade their conviction that homosexuality is okay for the millions of dollars they make, another route is needed to bring the homosexual message to middle America. That street is straight – as in straight actors playing up the gay cause to their fans. The leading crusader is actress Judith Light. Her quiet unassuming ways, her connection with the mainline comedy Who’s the Boss and her recurring TV movie roles make her a prime voice for the gay movement. “Because I’m heterosexual, people will listen to me more when I talk about gay and lesbian issues than they would if I were a lesbian,” says Light.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a Washington, D.C.-based gay lobbying group, does not try to hide the fact Light, Roseanne, Cybill Shepard, and Sharon Stone are their ministers of propaganda to mainstream America. “They are absolutely essential to bringing about change in this country, because we must effectively communicate not only with gay Americans,” says Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the HRC, “but also with the Rotary Clubs of America. That’s where the change will end up taking place.”
Some of the most recognized names on the political landscape are also backing the idea of recruiting straight figures and celebrities to voice the concerns. “We’re a small minority of the population,” says homosexual politician Rep. Barney Frank, “and in a democracy you don’t win if you don’t get more than 50% of the vote.”
Retiring Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder says getting straights into the debate is essential for forcing the homosexual agenda. “There’s nothing you can fight yourself when it comes to politics –you always need coalitions.”
Does it really matter?
Hollywood has made it apparent that gay issues will be a topic of the future in its product. Already, placing homosexual content in programming is considered old hat among Tinseltown elite. A poll by U.S. News and World Report shows that less than one-third of the Hollywood executives quizzed are concerned about homosexual activity on TV. That contrasts dramatically with another number in the same poll that shows 75% of Americans are worried about the way homosexual activity is portrayed on the small screen.
The stage is now set for the next logical step in the homosexual agenda. With a sex act or reference taking place once every four minutes on the four major networks’ prime-time schedules, it’s now a question of when, not if, those four-minute sex scenes cross the line from heterosexual to homosexual displays. Ambivalent America, where will your easy chair be when that happens? 
