Brent Bozell and MRC's decades-long losing battle against gays

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by Eric Hananoki, Media Matters for America (links at article, I'm too lazy to copy & paste here)

In 1987, L. Brent Bozell III started The Media Research Center to preserve "traditional American values." As Bozell made clear early on, one of the "values" that needed preserving was the idea that gays and lesbians are irregular and immoral.

In Bozell's mind, media outlets and, especially, Hollywood demonstrated "liberal bias" by failing to portray gays as "morally wrong." "What lessons are we teaching American children with these shows?" Bozell said in a 1992 Hollywood Reporter article. "Why can't a single primetime show say -- with no strings attached -- that homosexuality is morally wrong?"

The entertainment industry, according to Bozell in a 1997 Baltimore Sun interview, is "demanding the public accept the gay lifestyle as normal and acceptable for families." The gay lifestyle and agenda, Bozell warned, includes attempts to "teach children, and that's in utter opposition to mainstream America."

Since its founding, Bozell and the MRC have often been on the front-lines against any attempt by Hollywood to treat gays as human. Over the years, they've complained about the negative portrayal of a movie character who disowned her gay daughter and objected to the presence of gay characters on television programs. A brief history of some of their complaints:

* In 1993, TriStar Pictures released Philadelphia, which told the story of a gay man (played by Tom Hanks) suing a law firm that discriminated against him because he had AIDS. The movie went on to be an enormous box office success (capitalism!), grossing over $200 million -- in 1993 dollars -- worldwide. The film also won two Academy Awards, including an Oscar for Hanks, who gave an emotional acceptance speech thanking his gay high school teacher. MRC's Sandy Crawford, however, criticized the film for portraying people opposed to "the gay lifestyle" as "bigots": "'Philadelphia' was a good film -- beautifully acted and very compelling. But anybody who was morally opposed to the gay lifestyle was presented as a total bigot. You either were 100 percent for Tom Hanks or you were a villain" (Kansas City Star, March 1996).

* An episode of NBC's Mad About You featured a lesbian who, according to Bozell, was "quickly" accepted by her partner's parents. Bozell complained that the show treated the "morality" of the relationship as "irrelevant, beneath discussion."

* The 1996 TV movie Two Mothers for Zachary negatively portrayed a mother who disowned her daughter for being gay.

* NBC's Friends "featured the wedding of two women raising the child one had with her ex-husband."

* CBS's Chicago Hope featured a storyline in which a lesbian couple had "a doctor artificially inseminate one of them."

Read more: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006230037

h/t: RSS and Terry Krepel's blog post " It's Gay-Bashing Week At NewsBusters"

What does MRC also do besides attack gays and ANYONE who dares defend them?
- Defend Rush Limbaugh by complaining non-stop about that questionable "slavery had its merits" quote while ignoring every other bigoted thing Limbaugh has said 1000s of times since the 90s
- Break the laws of logic to find "liberal bias" any, everywhere
- Assert Bush talking points as fact (even if wrong) to prove anti-Bush bias in media