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Thread: From Bewitched to Modern Family, How Sitcoms Helped Shape $#@! History

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    Exclamation From Bewitched to Modern Family, How Sitcoms Helped Shape $#@! History

    From Bewitched to Modern Family, How Sitcoms Helped Shape $#@! History

    Here's how some of the most popular sitcoms in America helped further LGBTQ+ acceptance.



    Screenshot 2023-06-04 at 09-12-28 From 'Bewitched' to 'Modern Family ' How Sitcoms Helped Shape .png


    In this excerpt from his new book, Hi Honey, I'm Homo!: Sitcoms, Specials, and the $#@!ing of American Culture, Them contributor Matt Baume outlines the untold history of how sitcoms helped Americans come to accept LGBTQ+ people, from a lesbian kiss on Roseanne to an early gay marriage on Roc.

    Posner knew this meant trouble. It was 1977, and she’d recently been hired as a secretary on a new sitcom called Soap that was set to premiere on ABC that fall. Although the public had yet to see a single frame of the program, it already had the country up in arms, thanks to a Newsweek reporter who’d read a leaked script and declared that Soap was “impure,” full of sacrilegious sex, gay love affairs, nymphomaniacs, cross-dressers, and kink.



    Soap needs its mouth washed out,” fumed the head of one ABC affiliate.


    A national outcry had ensued. Conservatives were furious that a television show would attempt such boundary-pushing themes; gay community leaders feared negative depictions of $#@! characters would set their movement back by years. Groups that were normally on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum now organized complementary nationwide protests and letter-writing campaigns against the show.



    ezgif-3-ceddc9cda9.jpg


    Whether Americans tuned in to watch sitcoms, dramas, or the nightly news, TV reflected the prevailing belief that $#@! people were, at best, mincing freaks and, at worst, a public menace.


    Exasperated by these portrayals and emboldened by a growing $#@! liberation movement, community organizers in the early 1970s began pressuring the three major networks to stop airing cruel stereotypes. Their tactics ranged from letter-writing campaigns to tense meetings with broadcast executives to sit-ins at network headquarters. And to everyone’s surprise, these methods sometimes worked, with occasional depictions popping up on broadcast television that were not entirely mortifying — and even, on a very good night, positive.





    https://www.them.us/story/how-sitcom...c-012af06626e3
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    I am a long time fan of Bewitched and All in the Family and thought Soap was also quite funny. Never watched Ellen who ruined her own show trying to make it all about lesbianism from what I read at the time. I have tried to watch Modern Family a couple of times because it comes on right after my favorite "The Big Bang Theory" but I find it not the slightest bit funny and trying way too hard to constantly message!
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    Quote Originally Posted by RMNIXON View Post
    I have tried to watch Modern Family a couple of times because it comes on right after my favorite "The Big Bang Theory" but I find it not the slightest bit funny and trying way too hard to constantly message!
    I could never get into Modern Family either. I had heard a lot of buzz about it, and knew that it was dominating the Emmy awards usually, so I tried watching it a few times. Yeah, it was immediately obvious why Hollywood was giving it all those awards, it was because they were pushing the gay stuff. Oddly, even it seems tame these days. Big Bang Theory was, of course, awesome, and I don't remember anything about it ever being woke at all. It might have been one of the last such sitcoms.

    Interesting topic, I remember a lot of these things, like the controversy over SOAP and the lesbian kiss on Roseanne. Shouldn't be any surprise Hollywood has been behind a lot of the gay agenda pushes.
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    I have to agree that SOAP was a little different. It was not making fun of the people but was making fun of all the different situations showing up on TV.

    Now the real Soaps are promoting every left wing issue that exists. My wife still watches Days of our Lives and it has gay white people, gay black couples and naturally everyone accepting them without issue and they push it into make out sessions and into the bedrooms. The entire series is disproportionately black, and gay. Of course all the evil characters are woman with woke men groveling at their feet.
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    Quote Originally Posted by DGUtley
    Here's how some of the most popular sitcoms in America helped further LGBTQ+ acceptance.
    If you folks want to save yourselves a few bucks, Matt Baume has a YouTube channel, where I suspect many of the chapters in his book have a corresponding video. His videos are mostly well done, but sometimes he takes an unfair swipe at LGBTQ+ detractors. He holds a special animus for Ronald Reagan that I've never thought was warranted, as Reagan had gay friends like Rock Hudson. Obviously, Reagan neither caused AIDS nor made it worse.

    Matt Baume's YouTube channel

    The All in the Family ones are pretty funny:





    The Frasier ones are too:





    After high school, a bunch of my buddies moved down to Long Beach to go to school. There was this gay neighbor always trying to groom us. He absolutely loved the show Dynasty. Here's Baume's take on that show:



    Quote Originally Posted by RMNixon
    I have tried to watch Modern Family a couple of times because it comes on right after my favorite "The Big Bang Theory" but I find it not the slightest bit funny and trying way too hard to constantly message!
    I think that's a lot of the problem now, because it becomes a lecture rather than entertainment.

    Quote Originally Posted by Omar
    Shouldn't be any surprise Hollywood has been behind a lot of the gay agenda pushes.
    Well, homosexuals tend to be attracted to the dramatic arts, kind of like how BDSM people are attracted to political power.

    Quote Originally Posted by carolina73
    My wife still watches Days of our Lives and it has gay white people, gay black couples and naturally everyone accepting them without issue and they push it into make out sessions and into the bedrooms. The entire series is disproportionately black, and gay. Of course all the evil characters are woman with woke men groveling at their feet.
    Yeah. I find Netflix series tough to take for the same reason.
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