For anyone who has missed the memo, the month of June is “Pride Month.” Of course, in 2020, the phrase “missed the memo” here is more than an idiomatic expression; in many cases it can be taken quite literally. We live in an age when it is now standard practice for many companies to issue a memo to employees describing not only how the corporation will be marking “Pride Month,” but also loaded with tips and ideas for how employees can (and may be frankly expected to) mark the occasion in their own lives and in their homes.
If we manage to navigate the gauntlet of workaday office life without being cudgeled by the pro-LGBT agenda at every turn, we still are unlikely to miss it entirely as our entire culture is inundated with the same spirit and message. Scrolling down our Facebook news feed, our Twitter homepage, or through the accounts we follow on Instagram, it seems every brand logo has been swapped out for the month with a rainbow-flag themed avatar. And of course, it isn’t only the “new media” space that is annually overwritten in June and made into a palimpsest of all things LGBT, but the traditional media as well. Take a look at the TV listings, and you can see what I mean.
For a case-in-point, we can consider the last three successive Sundays of programming on the ABC network. Before proceeding, it seems worth mentioning that, if the reader is the same age or older than I am, Sunday nights on ABC will carry a certain resonance. When I was growing up, Sunday was the evening and ABC the network given over to “The Wonderful World of Disney.” Whatever one’s thoughts on the Disney Corporation nowadays, most of us can recall a time when Sunday nights on ABC felt like the safe-space in a game of cultural tag, a sort of oasis in the week where we could count even more than on other evenings on a programming offering that would be, if not fully family-friendly, at least not as overtly offensive as evening soap-opera dramas or sitcoms could tend to be. But those naive days have gone…
Returning, then, to 2020 and the last three Sundays of ABC prime-time. ABC has been selling Sunday as a “fun and games” night, but a closer look at the last few weeks is neither fun, nor does it seem merely a game: it seems more like a plot. The anchor program is Celebrity Family Feud, which began its sixth season on May 31st, and here is the lineup we’ve seen from this new season so far:
- May 31: The Queer Eye: OG versus The Queer Eye: The New Class
- June 7: Andy Cohen vs. Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Kevin Nealon vs. Drew Carey
- June 14: The Bold Type vs. RuPaul’s Drag Race
Do we notice a pattern here? First, a night featuring two casts of the most popular mainstream gay-centric show on television; then a night featuring celebrities from the Bravo network (which is often cited as one of the most gay-friendly networks on TV, one of those celebrities, Andy Cohen, being the first openly gay late night television talk host; and then finally a night featuring RuPaul’s drag queen team.
There was a bit of situational irony in the last of these pairings worth noting. As this is the celebrity edition of Family Feud, contestants play not for personal prize money but for proceeds directed toward their favorite charities. In this case, RuPaul’s team played for The Ali Forney Center, a charity which helps at-risk and runaway LGBT youths. But the irony enters in with the other charity, for which the cast of The Bold Type played: Girls, Inc. This charity is focused on the empowerment of young women and, among other things, “advocate[s] for legislation and policies to increase opportunities and rights for all girls.” It simply seems ironic and dissonant for women dedicated to such a cause to be participating in this show with champions of the gender-bending construct of drag. After all, it has been noted frequently in the past, and recently here at iFamNews, that the ideals of feminism and the goals of empowering and respecting women are often in stark contrast to and in deep conflict with transgender ideology.
But this observation about irony is an aside. The main point here is the pattern we can see in just three Sundays’ worth of programming on a single network in this “Pride Month.” Surely, the inclusion of LGBT cultural icons three weeks in a row in ABC’s prime-time “fun and games” lineup is not mere coincidence. It is deliberate and planned, a barrage of propaganda for the LGBT agenda in Sunday prime-time TV, the space once upon a time reserved for family viewing. The effort to redefine and reshape the family, marriage, and sex for the future is not just being pursued in the courts, or in the legislatures, or in the academy: it is being channeled into our very living rooms.
Accordingly, the fight to defend the natural family, the sanctity of life, the institution of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, the nature of sex and the natural complementarity of the sexes must also take root in the home. This begins with accepting that “The Wonderful World of Disney” and family TV night are gone; we’ve arrived at the Brave New World of ABC, and Sunday night as the night of the “new” family of progressive elitism. We no longer have that safe space in cultural tag—we’ve been tagged, we’re “it.” Time to turn off the TV and start developing our strategies for winning what, it turns out, isn’t fun and games at all.