The closet door swung open on a highly hyped episode of “The Simpsons” on Sunday, but the identity of the woman who stepped out was hardly a shocker.
When Marge Simpson’s sister Patty announced on “There’s Something About Marrying” that she’s going to have a gay wedding, her hated brother-in-law Homer was nonchalant.
“Yeah, big surprise,” Homer cracked. “And here’s another one–I like beer!”
The episode in a nut shell: After a negative TV report kills off tourism in Springfield, town leaders legalize same-sex marriage in an effort to bring in new money (TV pitch, set to a reggae tune: “Gay-Oh, it’s OK-Oh!)
After Rev. Lovejoy refuses to marry same-sex couples, Homer steps up, gets his ordination online and agrees to perform gay weddings for $200 a pop.
When Patty announces she’s going to marry Veronica, an LPGA player–who looks oddly like Billie Jean King–Marge is tormented by her sister’s sexual orientation.
Finally, during the wedding, Marge reveals that she has discovered Veronica is actually a man–Leslie Robin Swisher. Although he offers to still marry Patty, she declares, “Hell no! I like girls!”
As television’s longest-running sitcom, “The Simpsons” is no stranger to hot-button social, religious and political issues. The show has mocked wardrobe malfunctions, Hollywood liberals and born-again Christians, among other targets.
When a show as mainstream and popular as this takes on one of the most divisive issues in America, it is certain to attract attention.
In an unusual move for the show, a parental advisory proceeded its broadcast.
Bookmakers in the U.S. and England took bets as to which character would be revealed as homosexual (betus.com laid odds on Patty as the favorite to come out) and whether there would be a kiss–a nod, perhaps, to the popular programming gimmick of having lesbian characters lock lips during sweeps periods like the current one. Another show used Sunday’s sweep night to out a character. Sort of. In one of the last scenes, a son of one of the “Desperate Housewives” was caught making out in a pool with another teenage boy.
Less enticing was Homer’s fantasy Sunday of what life would be like if he could marry himself–complete with a long, passionate make-out session between Homer and Homer (shudder).
In some ways, “The Simpsons” seemed to have its cake and eat it, too–outing one of its major characters while stopping short of having her actually marry another woman.
The show’s producers have been so besieged with media queries and interview requests that no one connected with the show is willing to talk about it. As one associate told The Dallas Morning News, “All I can say is, I’ll be glad when this week is over.”
Not unexpectedly, culture warriors were swift to weigh in, both for and against the cartoon’s treatment of the issue.
“It’s saying to those who demonize homosexuality, or what they call the homosexual agenda, anything from ‘Lighten up’ to ‘Get out of town,'” said Marty Kaplan, associate dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication and host of a media show on the talk radio network Air America.
“It sounds as though they’re saying that what the religious right calls ‘the homosexualist agenda’–as if it were creeping Satanism–is [that] these people are your neighbors in the Springfield that is America.”
Brent Bozell III, president of the Parents Television Council, criticized “The Simpsons” for addressing the issue of gay marriage, though he said that he had not seen the episode.
“At a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood,” he said.
“I’d rather them not do it at all,” he said. “You’ve got a show watched by millions of children. Do children need to have gay marriage thrust in their faces as an issue? Why can’t we just entertain them?”
