X-MAN AGAINST GAY TELEVISION

[Jeff Wrangler]

This is a apropos of nothing—just a chance for me to write yet another offensive, disgusting posting.  From an episode of Looking, in a conversation that required some reply like “Is the pope Catholic?”   instead, “Does a bottom howl at the moon?”  You either get it or you don't.

 

[serious crayons]

Once gay marriage is no longer newsworthy, the couples will disappear from scripted TV shows--unless an important point of the show is that the couple is gay, like the one about the blended family headed by two lesbians.

Well, since gay couples are getting pretty common on TV right now, they're going to have to fire a lot of actors.

I think by the time gay marriage is on longer "newsworthy," it will become an ingrained enough part of everyday life that gay couples will be included on TV shows just like other people are. Perhaps they will share the complaint of many minorities that they're not well enough represented in the media, but they're pretty unlikely to disappear altogether given how many TV professionals are either gay or gay friendly and will be interested in telling those stories.

Its not the fact that companies are making money off the gay market segment, its the sentiment that such companies are perceived as being gay-friendly. They're not being friendly at all, they're just out to make a buck.

That's most likely right, since making a buck is the whole purpose of companies. Sometimes, of course, companies' reputations become linked with gay friendliness or unfriendliness -- look at the Chick Fil A (sp?) episode -- for some partiular reason.

If you want to measure the gay friendliness of a company, some obvious ways include seeing whether they employ representative numbers of gay people, whether they offer benefits to partners in states where gay people can't marry, and if so how long they've done it, etc. One easy way to measure the gay friendliness of a media company is to see how they portray gay people. Some news and entertainment outlets do better than others, obviously. The ones whose news stories, editorials, scripted shows, movies or whatever -- if they portray gay people in appealing ways, then I would consider whoever is in charge of controling content for that company to be gay friendly.

But yes, ulitimately their objective is to make money, so if nobody watches their gay-friendly show it will probably get canceled.

[milomorris]

If you want to measure the gay friendliness of a company, some obvious ways include seeing whether they employ representative numbers of gay people, whether they offer benefits to partners in states where gay people can't marry, and if so how long they've done it, etc. One easy way to measure the gay friendliness of a media company is to see how they portray gay people. Some news and entertainment outlets do better than others, obviously. The ones whose news stories, editorials, scripted shows, movies or whatever -- if they portray gay people in appealing ways, then I would consider whoever is in charge of controling content for that company to be gay friendly.

Having been down this road already with regards to race, I can tell you that none of the things you listed is any indication of how a company's Board, shareholders, management, or rank & file employees actually feel about sexual minorities. What those metrics represent is how well (or not) a company is able to do with regards to diversity policies that they might have in place, or how the company's behavior matches up with the expectations of those people who make a living measuring such things and bestowing "Good Housekeeping" seals. Naturally, most companies want that seal because its good for the bottom line, so they behave accordingly.

Portraying sexual minorities in appealing ways--which itself is all a matter of opinion, and which sexual minorities will debate among themselves--does not show how friendly a news and entertainment outlet is. It simply shows how savvy they are at capturing gay viewers, and people who are likely to appreciate those portrayals. If a network is not testing well with gay viewers, the fix is easy: have a detective on one of your hardboiled crime dramas come out of the closet, give a gay person a talk show, or give a gay comedian a sitcom. Problem solved. None of this has anything to do with friendliness.

[x-man]

And neither do I as long as the age of consent boundary is respected. The validity of age of consent is being argued right now over in the Men's Health thread.

Milo, I don't understand your preoccupation with age of consent.  Are you urging it on us because you believe the state has the right to decide even our most private behaviour, or do you think that magically your government has hit on exactly the best time to begin sexual activity?  Others here seem to think that people arrive at the appropriate time at different ages.  That would seem to be more likely than the government hitting on it by accident.  I say this because, at least in Canada, the age of consent has changed.  You might think it has gone down.  Not so.  It has gradually gone up.  In earlier days, the 1800's, it was 12, then raised to 14, and finally as now to 16.  That is the general age and like most sex laws in Canada is dependent on whether the sexual activity is consensual or is the result of coercion or exploitation.   Mental competency is always a factor that is taken into consideration.  It is not so much dependent on whether money is involved because prostitution is legal here, although subject to a lot of strictures that are always being challenged in court and gradually being eased.

While 16 is the general age, Canada has a more realistic approach to this than I thinkyou do in the States—correct me if I am wrong here about the US,  We have so-called “windows” which allow more latitude for the people involved.  14 and 15 year-olds have a 5-year window.  If the kids involved are 5 years or less different in age, they cannot be charged.  12 and 13-year olds have a 2-year window.  All of this assumes consent and  no coercion or exploitation is involved.  I think this approach makes a lot more sense than an arbitrary single age.  Do you have this in the States?  Is it determined federally, or state by state?

Gay sex was not legal until 1969, although criminal charges in the matter were dropped in 1967 when the federal government announced the change in policy; it took something over a year to make it through Parliament.  The police took a little longer to catch on.  I recall in 1972, a kid in the correctional camp I worked in coming to me to ask about this.  He knew I was gay, and would talk rationally about it.  Before he had been put in the system (for reasons that had nothing to do with sex) he was having sex with his boyfriend when the police broke in looking for drugs, and caught them at a bad time.  The guys were 15.  The cops told them they were too young to have sex and they faced being charged.  I explained to him that the cops were just messing with his head because of the window—they were the same age, within 5 years of each other and there was nothing the cops could do, so relax.  He was very happy to hear that he wouldn't be facing any outstanding charges when he left the camp in a few weeks.  Glad to help.

 

[milomorris]

Milo, I don't understand your preoccupation with age of consent. Are you urging it on us because you believe the state has the right to decide even our most private behaviour, or do you think that magically your government has hit on exactly the best time to begin sexual activity?

The state does indeed have the right to decide certain specifics when it comes to private behavior, and yes, some of those specifics has to do with sex. The state does not allow for sex with animals. The state does not allow for sex in public places. The state does not allow for married men or women to have sex outside their marriages. We, as a society have decided that these things need prohibition. Sex with children falls into the same category

Pedophilia is harmful primarily because children—as a group--have not reached a level of cognitive or emotional development that will allow them to make informed, reasonable decisions about sex. In other words, they are functionally incapable of giving consent because they cannot extrapolate the consequences of their behavior. Legally, there is no such thing as a consenting minor. Their lack of maturity leaves them vulnerable to the sexual advances of adults. Moreover, there is a power imbalance between an adult and a child. That power imbalance is often physical: adults are generally larger, stronger, and more skilled at physical confrontation than children, and even when an adult is not, children perceive them to be so. There is also a power imbalance due to the fact that the adult is “grown,” and the child is still growing: in other words, the adult has more experience, and is therefore perceived by the child to be wiser…regardless of whether that is actually true or not. So overall, the adult is operating from a position of power, and the child is operating from a position of weakness. Again, I’m generalizing here.

While is true that laws governing the age of consent have changed over time, like any other set of laws, those changes are reflective of the society and culture which write them. So to say that “back in the day, the age of consent was 13…” is irrelevant. Now is not then, and many dynamics have changed socially, technologically, and medically. I am also well aware that age of consent laws differ from one state to another here in the US, but one thing remains constant: there is no state that lacks an age of consent. As seriouscrayons pointed out in the Men’s Health thread, the state cannot test every adolescent under the age of consent to decide if they are emotionally and cognitively capable of handling themselves in sexual situations with an adult. Therefore the state must draw a line somewhere, and that line has to apply to everyone, otherwise it is impossible for the state to protect those that are vulnerable. Does that suck for the 17-year-old who is a freshman at Harvard, lost his virginity 2 years ago, and is really hot for the 24-year-old graduate student? You bet. But both of them will get over it. If they feel that strongly about it, they will wait a year until the freshman is 18, then they can go at each other all day every day if that’s what they want to do.

As I said over in Men’s Health, I have personally witnessed a “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” permissiveness in the gay community when it comes to having sex with minors. Both the pedophilia and the permissiveness do harm to the population of sexual minorities as a whole because they reinforce age-old social fears that link male homosexuality with pedophilia. The sex scandal with the Catholic church has fanned the flames under that link, and dusted off stale, old prejudices. So I think it is important for the population of sexual minorities to do what it can to spread the message internally that this behavior is unacceptable.

[CellarDweller]

This is a apropos of nothing—just a chance for me to write yet another offensive, disgusting posting.  From an episode of Looking, in a conversation that required some reply like “Is the pope Catholic?”   instead, “Does a bottom howl at the moon?”  You either get it or you don't.

I haven't heard that one before.

[serious crayons]

Having been down this road already with regards to race, I can tell you that none of the things you listed is any indication of how a company's Board, shareholders, management, or rank & file employees actually feel about sexual minorities. What those metrics represent is how well (or not) a company is able to do with regards to diversity policies that they might have in place, or how the company's behavior matches up with the expectations of those people who make a living measuring such things and bestowing "Good Housekeeping" seals. Naturally, most companies want that seal because its good for the bottom line, so they behave accordingly.

Yes, individual personal "friendliness" is basically out of the equation in corporate policies, as I have tried to say all along. Corporations don't necessarily like or dislike any kind of person -- they like money. And sure, a company could offer benefits to unmarried same-sex partners while still having homophobes on its Board or on its janitor staff -- and obviously among its shareholders. When I said a company with those kinds of policies is "gay friendly" I didn't mean every single individual connected to that company is whatever the opposite of homophobic is.

So sure, if a company initiates some gay-friendly policy, it's hard to determine to what extent those decisions come from genuine altruistic emotions versus business motivations. For all we know, Ben & Jerry don't really like doing whatever good deeds it is they do, but they just hold their noses and keep reminding themselves that "these people buy our ice cream."

But having talked to a fair number of business leaders -- in stories I've worked on, among family members, etc. -- I know that they actually do tend to have opinions about social issues, and sometimes they act on those opinions in setting business policies. Obviously the Chick-fil-A guy did it, in a gay-unfriendly way, and there are people who are the opposite, and do it in a gay-friendly way.

Does anyone really care, as they're collecting their partner benefits, whether some random shareholder or janitor or Board member thinks they're a good idea? That shouldn't even have to be the point.

Portraying sexual minorities in appealing ways--which itself is all a matter of opinion, and which sexual minorities will debate among thcemselves--

Yes. I didn't mean to imply that sexual-minority opinion is homogenous. I was just trying to shorthand a more complex concept so I could get to my point. Let's just say, portray them in ways that few if any gay people find offensive. Or whatever.

does not show how friendly a news and entertainment outlet is. It simply shows how savvy they are at capturing gay viewers, and people who are likely to appreciate those portrayals. If a network is not testing well with gay viewers, the fix is easy: have a detective on one of your hardboiled crime dramas come out of the closet, give a gay person a talk show, or give a gay comedian a sitcom. Problem solved. None of this has anything to do with friendliness.

This argument is circular because you're not really disagreeing with what I keep saying. Yes, again, networks make decisions based on viewers = advertising = money. Decisions are generally based on the extent to which they enhance or detract from those components.

And yet! Networks are run by actual people, and those people have opinions. And scripts are written by actual people, and if those people are raging homophobes, they're probably not going to be skilled at writing good scripts about a gay detective. So yes, to a certain extent, the talent and decision-makers have to be on board with the philosophy.

Here's a good example. You might not be able to follow it if you don't watch "The Walking Dead," but Chuck will, so I'll see what he thinks. As background, TWD is about zombies, and it's the highest-rated show on TV not including sports and awards shows -- even though it's on cable.

By far the most popular cast member -- the show's breakout star, like Fonzie was on "Happy Days" -- is the character Daryl, who is a tough, brawny, badass who comes from the backwoods of Georgia and carries a crossbow. Not long ago, a rumor floated around that Daryl might be revealed to be gay. That hasn't happened yet on the show -- although when the latest season ended he was hanging around with a gay couple, so it still might. Anyway, at the time, the showrunner said he couldn't reveal anything but that, sure, that was a definite possibility.

Now think about who watches a zombie show. This isn't some highfalutin' prestige cable drama like "Mad Men." It's a zombie show, plain and simple, lots of blood and guts and action. In other words, I'm guessing that a large chunk of those 17 million viewers are young, straight men who admire Daryl as a tough badass.

What I'm saying is in that particular case, a showrunner made comments that, if anything, risked being a turnoff to the show's core audience. But he did it anyway, presumably influenced at least in part by his own personal attitudes.

[milomorris]

So to summarize, K, we both understand that sometimes companies do things that gay people like because its good for the bottom line, and sometimes they do things gay people like because someone with authority has an altruistic mind set. Sometimes its one or the other, sometimes its both.

Again, what I find annoying is that there are those in the public who squee every time a commercial for laundry detergent features a same-sex couple. And I find it equally annoying that there are those that accuse companies of "promoting" homosexuality every time a commercial for laundry detergent features a same-sex couple. Both groups are projecting emotional values onto the company that probably don't exist.

[serious crayons]

Again, what I find annoying is that there are those in the public who squee every time a commercial for laundry detergent features a same-sex couple. And I find it equally annoying that there are those that accuse companies of "promoting" homosexuality every time a commercial for laundry detergent features a same-sex couple. Both groups are projecting emotional values onto the company that probably don't exist.

I don't think the people who squee (or, for that matter, those who squee when a commercial features a biracial couple) are thinking "Yay! The chairman of the board of Proctor & Gamble has finally seen the light!" I think they're happy that gay couples are being presented to the general public as "normal," which until now they have not been (outside of home-decorating magazines and articles -- for years, the big exception to the rule). The chairman of the board may or may not be gay friendly, but presumably s/he thinks the general public is gay friendly enough that they'll still buy the laundry detergent or Cheerios, which is a sign of huge progress.

The people who say companies are "promoting" homosexuality are actually kind of right. For whatever deep-down emotional/business reason, those companies are choosing to promote their product with imagery that they know a segment of consumers will not like. The company for whatever reason does not worry about those people, has decided that the culture has progressed to the point that that segment no longer calls the shots, that the potential loss of that segment's business is not threatening enough to prevent the company from running the commercial.

Good news, however it came about.

[Jeff Wrangler]

The state does not allow for married men or women to have sex outside their marriages.

As usual in the U.S., laws vary from state to state. Adultery and fornication ceased to be a crime in Pennsylvania in 1973.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adultery