Brody's Scribbles... The Religious Right Targets Glee For Making Homosexuality Normal

By Michael A. Jones (Boston, Massachusetts) June 8 | Walk into any given house on a Tuesday night, and there's a good chance you'll find Jane Lynch, Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and the rest of the cast of Glee singing to Van Halen or Barbra Streisand or Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

(Talk about a Mötley Crüe! Oh, music puns ...)

But if you walk into Brent Bozell's house on a Tuesday night, don't expect to see Glee on the tube. Bozell is a conservative blogger over at Townhall ("Where your opinion counts." So long as it's a little more Glenn Beck than Glenn Greenwald). Bozell is also a founder of a conservative media outfit known as the Media Research Center, where he watches hours upon hours of television and then determines which shows will earn you a direct flight ticket right into the underworld.

Glee happens to be one of those shows, though forget a direct ticket to the underworld — Glee is practically a rocket ship of damnation. And for Bozell, there's one primary reason why gets Satan salivating: it makes the practice of homosexuality normal.

Bozell wrote a treatise on Glee this past week, in the wake of a highly publicized episode where the father of Kurt (the show's openly gay character) confronts some homophobic language directed at his son, namely that three letter f-word that many of us have heard at least once in our life. Bozell gets on the Fox network's case for making this show what he considers a megaphone for the homos.

"This show has presented gay as the 'new normal,'" Bozell writes, "and has not suggested, but presented that the abnormal people are the ones who adhere to apparently outdated Christian morality." Bozell goes on to gripe that the show only portrays people who are against homosexuality as "vicious school bullies," or giant meanies who would rather bust open the heads of many a queer kid.

As they say, "Earth to Bozell: The truth hurts." It's 2010, and yes, we're heading for a time where thankfully it's going to be abnormal to adhere to a belief system that says someone's sexual orientation or gender identity ought to be judged and condemned.

Perhaps Bozell isn't aware of the fact that nearly nine out of ten LGBT high school students report some sort of harassment (either emotional or physical) inside the classroom. And maybe Bozell isn't aware that LGBT youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers, in large part because of the ridicule they get from their peers (or their parents or teachers) because of their real or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

Because if Bozell was clued in to these harrowing statistics, perhaps he wouldn't view homophobes with such rose-colored glasses. Nonetheless, Bozell issued a challenge to the creators of Glee: can you create a character that loves the homosexual, but hates the homosexual sex? As if the "love the sinner, hate the sin" version of homophobia is somehow less destructive toward LGBT youth than the mean school bully version.

But here's hoping Glee listens to him, though, and does bring on someone who believes that homosexuality is biblically icky. And then here's hoping that Glee's creators take that character, and march her or him through the epiphany process that so many people have as they meet queer people, befriend queer people, and heck, even grow to love queer people. that among 18-29 year-old evangelicals, close to 60 percent believe that gay men and women deserve the right to have their relationships recognized. There's no reason that Glee can't feature one of these fine voices. And who knows, maybe some hearts and minds in middle America will change, too.

Hmm ... maybe Bozell better be careful what he wishes for.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.