Gay rights groups call for demonstration at News Channel 8’s Tampa office after it aired homophobic infomercial (video)
July 13, 2009 at 2:33 pm by Lorna Bracewell
By Lorna Bracewell
PoHo contributor
On Saturday, June 27, thousands of people gathered in the streets of St. Petersburg, FL for the city’s annual Gay Pride parade and festival. While we were celebrating and honoring the legacy of the LGBT civil rights movement, our local NBC affiliate (WFLA-Ch. 8) was airing Speechless: Silencing the Christians, an hour long special paid for by the conservative American Family Association (AFA) that makes a series of specious and demeaning claims about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.
Watch a clip from the program after the jump.
Within hours of airing Speechless, WFLA was flooded with phone calls and emails from viewers who disagreed with and disapproved of the special’s anti-gay thesis. Equality Florida, a Tampa based statewide gay rights group, repeatedly petitioned the station and its parent company, Media General, to issue a public apology for airing the homophobic program, to divest themselves of the $35,000 paid to them by the AFA by donating it to an LGBT youth organization, and to devote an hour of air time to a special that balances out the hateful message of Speechless. So far, these petitions have gone unanswered except for a comment from Media General’s top Florida exec, John Schueler, who told Equality Florida that he could see why “people who have chosen the homosexual lifestyle might be offended” by the program’s “strident tone” but that the program “didn’t raise any red flags” for him or his associates.
Didn’t raise any red flags? According to Speechless, homosexuals (who, for PR reasons, started calling themselves “gays” in the 1990’s) are a danger to children and an existential threat to the family; they are the masterminds of an elaborate conspiracy to eradicate Christian influence and Christians themselves from our culture; they are simultaneously a cause and a symptom of cultural, spiritual and national decline. How could such apocalyptic rhetoric, such demonization of a segment of society not raise any red flags?
Imagine if Speechless targeted a racial minority instead of LGBT people. Imagine if the voiceover at the beginning of the program went something like this: “Family values, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and morality are all threatened by a radical Asian American activist agenda that’s redefining the family, teaching children that Asian Americans are normal and pushing for minority status and preferential treatment for Asian Americans” (replace the words “Asian American” with “homosexual” and you have an actual line from Speechless). All the money in the world couldn’t get that special aired on WFLA.
Due to Media General’s flagrant disregard for fairness… oh, let me try that again eschewing the euphemisms for once. Due to Media General’s flagrant disregard for the equal citizenship and physical safety of LGBT people in Tampa Bay and everywhere, Equality Florida, Impact-Florida (Ed’s. note: of which Lorna is founder) and a number of other grassroots groups from the surrounding area are organizing a demonstration outside of Media General’s Tampa headquarters at 202 S Parker St., Tampa, on Wednesday at 5:30 pm.
WFLA and Media General have made it clear over the past two weeks that they do not speak the language of reason and civility. We have tried to engage their decision makers in innumerable other ways. Since these attempts have failed, we will be there this Wednesday (at the same time as Media General’s national president) to make our demands in the “strident tone” Media General seems to prefer. Since many of us “homosexuals” are Christians ourselves, we may even quote a scripture or two. Perhaps a little something from Jeremiah? “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by injustice” (Jeremiah 22:13).
