{"id":1150,"date":"2005-02-20T22:41:37","date_gmt":"2005-02-21T02:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/02\/20\/gay-simpsons\/"},"modified":"2005-02-20T22:41:37","modified_gmt":"2005-02-21T02:41:37","slug":"gay-simpsons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/02\/20\/gay-simpsons\/","title":{"rendered":"Gay Simpsons!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a939'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/21\/arts\/television\/21simpsons.html?partner=rssuserland\">And so it happened<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>BF and I can marry, here in Massachusetts, and also in Springfield, U.S.A!<\/p>\n<p>A few cheers and jeers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Hooray<\/span>: Homer looks for his online ordination so that he can make<br \/>\ndough off of the crowds of gays that Rev. Lovejoy won&#8217;t marry.&nbsp;<br \/>\n(Lovejoy says the Bible forbids gay marriage, Marge asks which book,<br \/>\nLovejoy says, &#8220;The Bible!&#8221;, Marge tries to talk further, Lovejoy rings<br \/>\nthe church bells to drown her out.)&nbsp; One of the churches Homer<br \/>\nalmost gets his ordination from is the &#8220;e-Piscopal Church.&#8221;&nbsp; If the<br \/>\nSimpsons make fun of you, you&#8217;ve come around.<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Boo! Hiss!<\/span>:<br \/>\nFox runs from the FCC.&nbsp; Before the episode began, we were advised<br \/>\nthat &#8220;Due to mature themes discussing gay marriage, viewer discretion<br \/>\nis advised.&#8221;&nbsp; For God&#8217;s sake, it&#8217;s the Simpsons.&nbsp; If<br \/>\nanything, this show&#8217;ll probably deal with it with more maturity and<br \/>\ngood sense than anything else on the airwaves.&nbsp; Which says<br \/>\nsomething about the discourse around this in our country right<br \/>\nnow.&nbsp; Actually, it doesn&#8217;t really, because the Simpsons continues<br \/>\nto prove one of the most insightful and intelligent pieces of popular<br \/>\nculture that our society produces.&nbsp; \n  <\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Yay!<\/span>: When Homer runs out<br \/>\nof gay couples to marry, $200 short of the $14,800 he needs for a 62&#8243;<br \/>\nTV, he wonders aloud if he could get Lenny and Carl to marry.&nbsp;<br \/>\nMarge: &#8220;You leave them alone to figure that out themselves!&#8221;&nbsp;<br \/>\nLenny and Carl &#8212; not just potentially gay, but interracially<br \/>\ngay.&nbsp; (As Homer&#8217;s hand note once said, &#8220;Lenny=white, Carl=black.&#8221;)<\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Cheer<\/span>: Why do the people of Springfield decide to legalize gay marriage?&nbsp; Because they offend <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calgold.com\/about.asp\">a Southern bumpkiny television host<\/a>,<br \/>\nwho declares Springfield the worst town he&#8217;s ever visited, and it<br \/>\ndestroys their tourist industry.&nbsp; So to make quick money off &#8220;all<br \/>\nthe disposable income&#8221; gays have, they legalize marriage.<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>Which raises the question in a backhanded way of how much of the screaming we&#8217;re<br \/>\ngoing at right now is really about preserving some fundamental social<br \/>\nvalue, and <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">how much is about preserving power and money<\/span>?&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/02\/20\/politics\/20talk.html?partner=rssnyt\">Even<br \/>\nGeorge Bush recognized that certain &#8220;religious leaders&#8221; hypocritically<br \/>\ncare more about using gays as power-raising scapegoats than about gays<br \/>\nas people<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Later, he read aloud an aide&#8217;s report from a convention of the<br \/>\nChristian Coalition, a conservative political group: &#8220;This crowd uses<br \/>\ngays as the enemy. It&#8217;s hard to distinguish between fear of the<br \/>\nhomosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is an issue I have been trying to downplay,&#8221; Mr. Bush said. &#8220;I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Told that one conservative supporter was saying Mr. Bush had pledged<br \/>\nnot to hire gay people, Mr. Bush said sharply: &#8220;No, what I said was, I<br \/>\nwouldn&#8217;t fire gays.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure that plenty of the culture-protectors of the &#8220;Christian&#8221; right<br \/>\nwill critique and bash the show without having seen it, claiming that<br \/>\nwe shouldn&#8217;t put such divisive moral issues on a show that entertains<br \/>\nchildren.&nbsp; (They&#8217;re only like this because they know they cannot<br \/>\nwin this &#8220;battle&#8221;, that history has shown up many of the right&#8217;s &#8220;moral&#8221; stands as cloaked bigotry.)&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>But the Simpsons has always been more than<br \/>\nentertainment.&nbsp; In putting the mirror of humor up to fear and<br \/>\nhatred and stupidity, it defuses it more effectively than almost<br \/>\nanything else.&nbsp;<br \/>\nIn making fun of all of us, it puts us in perspective and in our<br \/>\nplace.&nbsp; If Homer, an uber anti-hero, can deal with it &#8212; whatever<br \/>\n&#8220;it&#8221; is this week &#8212; then what are we making such a fuss about?<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ll permit a slight Anglican intrusion (other than that above),<br \/>\nthe Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, a pretty hefty<br \/>\nintellectual himself, has called the show &#x201C;one of the most subtle<br \/>\npieces of propaganda around in the cause of sense, humility and<br \/>\nvirtue.&#x201D;&nbsp; He also said, &#x201C;It&#x2019;s generally on the side of the angels<br \/>\nand on the side of sense. It<br \/>\npunctures lots of pompous fictions about how the world works.&#x201D;&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>And it did that tonight.&nbsp; It portrayed our national &#8220;debate&#8221;<br \/>\naccurately, in some sense, and we look pretty much like the fools that<br \/>\nwe are.&nbsp; But you can only really be a fool when you take yourself seriously.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/section\/quiz\/index.asp?sectionID=&amp;surveyID=173\">BTW, check out this quiz on &#8220;Religion in &#8216;The Simpsons.'&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And so it happened. BF and I can marry, here in Massachusetts, and also in Springfield, U.S.A! A few cheers and jeers: Hooray: Homer looks for his online ordination so that he can make dough off of the crowds of gays that Rev. Lovejoy won&#8217;t marry.&nbsp; (Lovejoy says the Bible forbids gay marriage, Marge asks [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-day2day"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-iy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}