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Conservative group to launch campaign against Bravo show
Montana Family Coalition calls ‘Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’ trash
Published Thursday, 18-Sep-2003 in issue 821
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — The conservative Montana Family Coalition plans to launch a campaign against the new television show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” calling it trash that should not be on TV.
The coalition’s executive director, Julie Millam, said the group’s campaign will target advertisers who air commercials during the one-hour reality show that features five gay designers who give aesthetically inept straight men head-to-toe makeovers.
“To me, that’s not a reality show about gay people,” Millam said. “A really good reality show for gay people would be five gay men dying of AIDS.”
Gay rights advocates in Montana say the Montana Family Coalition’s reaction to “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” is really a reaction against growing mainstream acceptance of gay content on television and in American life.
“The Montana Family Coalition and other groups are in some ways losing the culture war,” said Karl Olson, director of the gay rights group PRIDE. “There is a proliferation of TV shows that have some kind of gay content, celebrities often support gay and lesbian issues, gay teens are making the most astounding progress in schools.”
The show airs on Bravo, an NBC-owned cable and satellite network.
A spokesman for Scout Productions, the East Coast company that produces “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” declined comment when contacted by Lee Newspapers of Montana.
Millam said she has personally heard many complaints about the program.
“There’s a groundswell of people who are very upset,” she said.
Montana affiliates of NBC, which ran the program this summer, said they received few if any calls from upset viewers.
Millam said the show is another example of the direction in which American television is moving.
“We don’t want to see (gay content) on every single TV show,” she said. “I’m hearing from people left and right, that every time they turn on the TV it’s something to do with gay people. It’s not reality.”
Olson said “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” is a television show, and should not be mistaken for reality.
“TV is one of the lowest cultural forms in our society,” he said. “I don’t put much stock in it.”
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