Other than the Cruise/Holmes relationship ending badly, nothing is more predictable than anti-gay outrage from Southern Baptists.
So this should surprise no one: just days before a new gay-friendly program was to debut on Channel 5's cable affiliate, Lifeway executives met with WTVF-Channel 5 general manager Deborah Turner to try to dissuade the station from airing the 30-minute news and interview show it was starting in partnership with the newspaper Out & About.
Lifeway is one of nearly a dozen entities of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has a habit of opposing any initiative that it regards as gay-friendly or even gay-tolerant. At its convention two years ago, it authored an anti-gay resolution stating its opposition to alleged media efforts to "mainstream homosexual unions."
"They expressed their concern for the community and certainly preferred that we did not air it," says Turner, who otherwise describes her meeting with Lifeway president Jimmy Draper, a former preacher, and other company executives as "very cordial."
Innocuously titled Out & About Today, the program's inaugural show, which ran at 9:30 p.m. last Saturday, featured straightforward interviews with Joe Solmonese, the president of Human Rights Campaign, and Michael Bassham, president of Nashville Pride. Former Tennessean editor and publisher John Seigenthaler, hardly regarded as a mouthpiece for the counterculture, also appeared on the show, offering his usual Purcellian rhetoric about how important it is for media to reach out to all members of the community.
Last April, Channel 5 asked Jerry Jones, the publisher of Out & About Nashville, if he would be interested in helping to launch a gay-oriented program on its cable affiliate as a part of its spate of diversity programming. Initially, he was surprised, because he regards the station as more conservative, but he says that working on the show with the station's staff has been a "great experience."
Given that most newscasters seem to think, perhaps accurately, that their viewers are primarily aging, white suburbanites, Channel 5's initiative may seem riskier than starting a fight with 50 Cent. So far, though, the backlash has been minimal. Aside from the predictable perspective of Baptist businessmen, only two small advertisers have dropped their spots on Channel 5, Turner says. Despite some disdain for the show and its symbolism, the station has also gotten its share of positive feedback.
Jones himself hardly resembles the caricature of a gay activist, looking instead very much like what he is, a newspaper editor. His by-the-book monthly publication covers the gay community like The City Paper covers the Metro Council—in a straightforward, informative and occasionally dull manner. Not that it should matter, but Out & About isn't exactly The Advocate.
"We don't have a heavy quota of drag queens in the paper, and I don't expect that to be in the show," Jones says.
But Jones' middle-of-the-road sensibilities are unlikely to appease the suits at Lifeway. They made no threats to boycott, perhaps deterred by the Southern Baptist Convention's woeful campaign against Disney, but they nevertheless were comfortable offering their unabashedly anti-gay perspective.
"They were clearly concerned about the program and the audience," Turner says. "But the purpose of having a cable station is to do news and programming for a variety of different audiences. This is just one more diverse part of that community."
Turner also met with local church leaders, who also, um, came out against Channel 5's show. Their reaction was as predictable as another Tom Cruise meltdown. "Nobody is opposed to the content of the show," Turner says. "It's that we're serving a group of people they consider immoral."
Turner would be wise to heed this advice: "No one can tell you what your values ought to be." None other than James Draper posted that on the Lifeway website.
So much for practicing what you preach.
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