{"id":1616,"date":"2004-12-03T09:18:29","date_gmt":"2004-12-03T13:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/12\/03\/the-church-bouncers\/"},"modified":"2004-12-03T09:18:29","modified_gmt":"2004-12-03T13:18:29","slug":"the-church-bouncers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/12\/03\/the-church-bouncers\/","title":{"rendered":"The church bouncers"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

You probably heard about the ad<\/a> that CBS and NBC refused to air<\/a>, in which bouncers keep everyone who’s not straight, white, and nuclear.<\/p>\n

\n

\nIn an interview yesterday, the president of research for NBC, Alan
\nWurtzel, said the spot ”violated a longstanding policy of NBC, which
\nis that we don’t permit commercials to deal with issues of public
\ncontroversy.” Wurtzel, who is in charge of broadcast standards at the
\nnetwork, said such issues should be handled by the news department and
\nnot in advertising.<\/p>\n

\n”The problem is not that it depicted gays, but that it suggested
\nclearly that there are churches that don’t permit a variety of
\nindividuals to participate,” Wurtzel said. ”If they would make it just
\na positive message — ‘we’re all-inclusive’ — we’d have no problem
\nwith that spot.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Except.<\/p>\n

Martin Luther King, Jr. noted in 1958,  “Unfortunately, most of
\nthe major denominations still practice segregation in local churches,
\nhospitals, schools, and other church institutions.  It is
\nappalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven
\no’clock on Sunday morning, the same hour when many are standing to
\nsing:  “In Christ There Is No East Nor West.”<\/p>\n

And in the informal way that these things do, this holds true
\ntoday.  How many “colored people”, queer people, or divorced
\npeople are at your church?  Mine could do better on some of
\nthese.  Yours could, too.  At least the UCC is trying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You probably heard about the ad that CBS and NBC refused to air, in which bouncers keep everyone who’s not straight, white, and nuclear. In an interview yesterday, the president of research for NBC, Alan Wurtzel, said the spot ”violated a longstanding policy of NBC, which is that we don’t permit commercials to deal with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-q4","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616","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=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}