When does entertainment stop being entertainment and cross the line into propaganda?
On ABC it's Tuesday nights at 10:00, when Boston Legal airs.
ABC used its October 16 Boston Legal episode, “Do Tell,” to promote the homosexual agenda, with a story about a homosexual general suing the United States Army for discharging him on the basis of his sexual orientation.
To deliver the politically correct message, the Boston Legal writers spoke through their characters as if they were ventriloquist's dummies. “Tolerant” characters had ample opportunity to expound on the discrimination gays face, as lawyer
Think of the discrimination gays face. We've got senators running around proposing constitutional amendments that prevent them from enjoying the same freedoms heterosexuals have, never mind the proliferation of hate crimes where they're routinely beaten up, and multiply that bigotry times 10, times 50—that's what Fitz faced while he was growing up.
Or when Shirley Schmidt, the lawyer for General “Fitz” Fitzgerald, says during her courtroom argument:
We don't allow gays to marry, we don't allow them to give blood, we make it next to impossible for them to get health insurance, and how about the big national tribute to Jerry Falwell, the man who blamed 9/11 on God's wrath against homosexuals? We give him a state funeral, like he's a national hero?
Schmidt, played by veteran actress Candice Bergen, ironically the daughter of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen, comes down hard on the “don't ask, don't tell” policy: “We're not only tolerating intolerance, we're codifying it into national policy.”
Amidst all the homosexual propaganda, the writers also slipped in a few sarcastic jabs against President Bush and the War on Terror. When asked how “this war would go…if every gay soldier decided to sue?” Schmidt replies, “Uh, let me guess. Less well than it's going now?”
Or this exchange between the general and Denny Crane:
FITZ: So he lied. Think it's the first time a president lied to get us into a war?
DENNY CRANE: I don't know, Fitz. He just – he makes it hard to – win an argument. I keep waiting for him to do something right.
Giving the episode a “ripped from the headlines” feel, the writers used Schmidt to go after the current presidential candidates:
I was watching a debate – there were at least 12 candidates standing on stage – not one dared challenge “don't ask, don't tell.” I-I guess politicians feel bigotry can be ratified by a 59 percent approval rating, but whether your name is Hillary, Obama, Rudy, Mitt, their message is all the same—“you want to be gay, fine. But for God's sake, keep it to yourself.”
The writers also used Schmidt to jab at religious-based homosexual therapy programs, as she pressures the judge to recuse himself from the case:
SCHMIDT: But given your own – oh, let's call it baggage – perhaps you should hand this ball off.
JUDGE BROWN: Why?
SCHMIDT: Okay. You once sued a religious institution because it failed to cure you of your homosexuality.
BROWN: (Sighs) I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the homosexual party. I admitted to having... isolated, abhorrent, unnatural... urges. I'll have you know I no longer do.
SCHMIDT: Oh, great. So you are cured. I find card-carrying heterosexuals with histories of abhorrent, unnatural urges to be least flexible on military issues.
Even the judge is eventually won over, ruling:
[T]here is no defensible rationale for “don't ask, don't tell.” There is no evidence that gay soldiers might distract the heterosexual ones. This isn't a bigotry supported by any real pragmatic concerns. This is 2007, and we are still telling people that they don't have the right to be who they really are? It's shocking... disgusting... abominable.
Colleen Raezler is a research assistant at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the
