From (?) 1978 to '80, U.S. evangelicals went from left to right?

hollywood_gay_marriage.jpg

And here's the "first" gay character on U.S. network TV, played by none other than Billy Crystal himself!
("first" popular and widely discussed character and show)

The character is "Jodie Dallas" from the sitcom Soap which debuted on ABC on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 1977.
 
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http://www.newnownext.com/greatest-gay-tv-characters/10/2013/

47. Jodie Dallas, SOAP

Actor: Billy Crystal
1977-1981
Previous Rank: 40

Billy Crystal is probably best known for hosting the Oscars, and starring in When Harry Met Sally and City Slickers. But the comedian really burst onto the scene with his turn as gay son Jodie Dallas on the ABC sitcom, Soap, which ran from 1977 to 1981.

Jodie Dallas may not have been the first gay character on network TV (that prize goes to Peter Panama, played by Vincent Schiavelli, in another ABC series called The Corner Bar (1972-3)), but he was arguably the first to make a substantial cultural impact. Many gay men of a certain age probably remember watching the show as a child and being secretly overjoyed to see someone like them on the small screen.

Unfortunately, the show became something of a rallying point for conservative Christian groups seeking to flex their media watchdog muscles. The National Council of Churches helped to organize a boycott against sponsors of the show, ABC reportedly received 32,000 letters of complaint before the premiere, and eight out of 195 ABC affiliates refused to air the show. The network, to its credit, refused to bow to pressure and carried the controversial series for three [additional] years.

Always successful in the ratings, the show was arguably done in by the steep discounting ABC had to do to fill commercial slots. According to executive producer Susan Harris, ABC carried the sitcom essentially without corporate sponsorship. –AE


[Soap had 85 episodes and ran from Sept. 13, 1977 to April 20, 1981.]

Wow, must have been a lot of good gay characters since then if Jodie Dallas is only ranked 47th. And yes, I do think it makes for better storytelling to include characters who are different in all kinds of various ways, including sexual orientation.

And please notice the part about "something of a rallying point for conservative Christian groups."
 
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Well, what the heck is wrong with Love Boat? ! ?

This is a show which promotes romance and coupling. Except, except . . . from an evangelical perspective, many of the new couples sleep with each other before the cruise is even half over! ! (you see, the show has to run the classic script of find sweetie, lose sweetie, get sweetie back)

PS If anyone could help me find the date and name of this episode, I'd appreciate it.
 
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And starting late January and early February 1978, ABC found their Saturday night one-two punch of Love Boat and Fantasy Island.

(This particular episode with Annette Funicello is probably "Jungle Man/Mary Ann and Miss Sophisticate" from March 8, 1980.)
 
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hollywood_gay_marriage.jpg

And here's the "first" gay character on U.S. network TV, played by none other than Billy Crystal himself!
("first" popular and widely discussed character and show)

The character is "Jodie Dallas" from the sitcom Soap which debuted on ABC on Tuesday, Sept. 13, 1977.

I thought Archie Bunker was the first "gay" character on TV

 
http://www.conservapedia.com/Unplug_the_NFL

Unplug the NFL is advocated by Conservapedia in response to the NFL's paganism, its promotion of the homosexual agenda, and its exclusion of Tim Tebow presumably for quoting the Bible "too much."[1]
The NFL's paganism ? ! ? Wow.

I was an evangelical Christian for a year and a half in my teenage years (beginning definite, ending much fuzzier). I feel I generally understand the language and much of how my former fellow evangelicals put together their worldview.

But Wow, out of what bare handful of blunders by the NFL or close judgment calls have they built this whole edifice?
 
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"What galvanized the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or the ERA . I am living witness to that because I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed. What changed their minds was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."--Paul Weyrich https://books.google.com/books?id=Tzi7bIDP3aMC&pg=PA173
At the same time, segregation was not enough to really form a coalition. Weyrich may have had some success, but I would say the main driver towards the right was P.F. Schaeffer, who really did believe it seemed the priority was stopping abortion.
 
Also the part about midway through where he talks about the Scouts and Boys Clubs and in kind of a vague, scary way raises the specter of sexual abuse. Well, it's a human problem, not in anyway unique to gays and lesbians.

I remember reading one study in which straight male teachers were slightly more likely to abuse their female students than gay teachers were to abuse their male students.

I'm not even sure back then parents had the advice of people talking about good touch, bad touch. I hope parents just keep raising their game. Maybe telling their kids, tell me early, tell me late when something happens, just go ahead and tell me.
 
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At the same time, segregation was not enough to really form a coalition. Weyrich may have had some success, but I would say the main driver towards the right was P.F. Schaeffer, who really did believe it seemed the priority was stopping abortion.
Both are threads of history. Apparently, evangelical "leaders" (cough, cough) really did put a lot of emphasis on tax exempt status for religious schools, even if the admission policies were discriminatory. Obviously to me, they weren't very good leaders.

And maybe this was one contributory factor to individual evangelicals becoming political at all. But by 1979 at the latest, evangelical Protestants were sincere about the issue of abortion. Of course, this was later than Catholics.

And if you're talking about Francis Schaeffer (the dad), yes, he was an interesting figure. Will try and find a link or photo.
 
As David T noted:

But the abortion myth quickly collapses under historical scrutiny. In fact, it wasn’t until 1979—a full six years after Roe—that evangelical leaders, at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term. Why? Because the anti-abortion crusade was more palatable than the religious right’s real motive: protecting segregated schools. So much for the new abolitionism.

In the course of my research into Falwell’s archives at Liberty University and Weyrich’s papers at the University of Wyoming, it became very clear that the 1978 election represented a formative step toward galvanizing everyday evangelical voters. Correspondence between Weyrich and evangelical leaders fairly crackles with excitement. In a letter to fellow conservative Daniel B. Hales, Weyrich characterized the triumph of pro-life candidates as “true cause for celebration,” and Robert Billings, a cobelligerent, predicted that opposition to abortion would “pull together many of our ‘fringe’ Christian friends.” Roe v. Wade had been law for more than five years.

So basically Ford needs to win so they don't start their anti-Carter campaign (actually a narrow Reagan win might be even better, given his weakness in '76 vs '80 + his appeal to the crazies) coupled with a bruising 1978 & 1980 defeat for Republicans. Alternatively there needs to be an issue for evangelical nutjobs to seize onto: ideally something that would not prove as successful. (Or alternate US Democratic President has a fantastic 1978 midterm & 1980 re-election.)
 
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1997/march3/7t322a.html

' . . . Yet this was no ordinary fundamentalist preacher. He [Francis] and his wife, Edith, had lived for ten years in a student commune they had started in the Swiss Alps. When he lectured, he wore an alpine hiking outfit—knickers, knee socks, walking shoes. By 1972 he had added to his already singular appearance long hair and a white tufted goat's-chin beard. . . '
This is Francis and Edith Schaeffer and their Christian retreat center in Switzerland.

And it sounds like he looks a little like . . . a hippie?
 
Yeah, Schhaeffer back in the day was a minor hipster icon...

Raised in Pennsylvania, Schaeffer lived much of his life as an expatriate in a Swiss chalet. His early books in the 1960s struck out against American evangelicalism's know-nothingism. When he lectured in the US, he would discuss the films of Bergman and Fellini on Christian campuses that wouldn't allow screenings of Bambi. He welcomed seekers from all faiths at his Swiss retreat, and didn't worry about the baggage they brought with them. "Backpacking private pharmacies," as Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis, characterises his father's disciples. L'Abri (or "the shelter"), as his father called the home they opened to all-comers, was in the 1960s and 1970s - the height of Schaeffer's intellectual production - a place of blasting music at all hours, drugs, sex and rock'n'roll. When a young Frank Schaeffer happened to meet Jimmy Page in 1969, Led Zeppelin's guitarist pulled a copy of one of Schaeffer Sr's early books, Escape From Reason, from his pocket and declared it "very cool". He said Clapton had given it to him.

link
 
. . . "Backpacking private pharmacies," as Frank Schaeffer, son of Francis, characterises his father's disciples. L'Abri (or "the shelter"), as his father called the home they opened to all-comers, was in the 1960s and 1970s - the height of Schaeffer's intellectual production - a place of blasting music at all hours, drugs, sex and rock'n'roll. . .

http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2007/10/francis-schaeffer-frank-art
I'm not all in favor of these wild environments, basically because some abusive stuff can happen. True, only a minority of guys will force themselves onto a woman or use intoxicants as a weapon, but as one bartender in her thirties who struck me as pretty street smart said, a rapist doesn't have a decal on their forehead.

Um, not real crazy about drugs either! Yes, marijuana is a gimme. To the extent people smoke weed rather than drink, I think their lives go better. But once we get to something like ecstasy (MDMA), I think it's pretty serious stuff. Yes, it can help people suffering from some types of depression, but as I have read, it can dampen down certain inhibitory neurotransmitters for three months or so. So, I say, please use sparingly if this appeals to you.

All in all, please mark me down as boringly middle-of-the-road! :)
 
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The Real Origins of the Religious Right, Politico Magazine, Randall Balmer, May 27, 2014.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

" . . . at the behest of conservative activist Paul Weyrich, seized on abortion not for moral reasons, but as a rallying-cry . . . "
This is the part I disagree with. Okay, Weyrich was a political operative and he may have been playing a game ten levels deep. And maybe evangelical "leaders" did get all in a tizzy about tax exempt status. But . . . individual evangelicals were pretty damn sincere about the issue of abortion.

Okay, so maybe we can run two tracks. First, we can look at how much time, effort, aggravation, worry, reputation, etc., Jerry Falwell devoted to the tax exempt issue. And if the effect is to knock Falwell down a few pegs, I'm probably all in favor of that.

And second, for starters, we can look at the anti-abortion movie made with the participation of Frank Schaeffer (the son) which was distributed in the United States around (?) 1979.
 
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I'm not all in favor of these wild environments, basically because some abusive stuff can happen.

If you haven't already, you might enjoy Joan Didion's essay about 1960s Haight-Ashbury, Slouching Toward Bethlehem. She quotes one of the residents as saying that rape was fairly common in that milieu.
 
I will keep this in mind for when I'm in a bleak mood. And thank you for giving me a reference which is somewhat well known and will catch other people's attention. People make excuses, thinking well, he's an otherwise normal, regular guy, and then it becomes a cognitive dissonance type of thing. And then people ending up blaming the victim, well, she must have gave him seriously mixed signals. Can't she kiss and make-out and not wish to go further? In fact, isn't that a very regular, standard possibility? I wish people would focus on the fact that yes, he's an otherwise normal, regular guy who believes some amazing rape myths because of the constant drumbeat of pop culture. In the pop culture references I've given above, I hope it's just good healthy sexuality. But I bet that if you looked at fair number of even episodes of Love Boat for crying out loud, you'd probably find some borderline marginal consent situations. Not so cool, and hell yes, there are better alternatives.

Certainly there would be timelines in which the issue of acquaintance rape is addressed far earlier. One of my more favorite timelines in general is a Soviet Union where in his own way Brezhnev is just as much a reformer as Khrushchev, but maybe Brezhnev is better at pacing, coalition building, clear and obvious successes, etc. So, maybe the Soviet Union begins very constructively addressing acquaintance rape in the 1960s. Well, we're not going to let them outcompete us!, is the attitude of us here in the United States. And thereby this becomes yet another example of virtuous competition.
 
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