Way To Go ABC Family!

Just recently, TV networks have finally realized that people don’t enjoy watching reruns of their favorite shows all summer long. They actually realized that it is good to have a second TV season, all be it, a short one- in the summer!

It’s great! There have been some excellent shows introduced to audiences over the summer. Last summer I fell in love with a great new series. I love science fiction, I love mysteries, I enjoy family dramas, I enjoy a little romance every once in a while, and I also appreciate smart comedy. Last summer I found all of my television needs met in one new excellent show; Kyle XY.

The show had a great plot involving an ‘escaped hybrid super teen’ with amnesia who found love and acceptance with his Washington State-appointed counselor’s family. The first season revolved around him discovering what it means to be human and learning how to do everything a teenage boy knows how to do in a very short amount of time- including talking. It had huge potential to be cheesy, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t because of exceptional writing and even more exceptional acting- Really. The acting on Kyle XY is REALLY good, especially that of the shows star, Matt Bloom, who plays Kyle, Marguerite MacIntyre, who plays Nicole Trager, Kyle’s counselor and newfound foster-mom, and Kristen Prout, who plays Amanda Bloom, Kyle’s love interest.

At first, the show seemed a little raunchy when it came to the sexual interaction between Kyle’s foster-sister, Lori Trager, and her boyfriend, Declan McDonough, (played well by April Matson and Chris Olivero), along with Lori’s trampy friend Hillary (played by Chelan Simmons) who was always trying to take off her pants for any guy that was introduced to the show. But I began to realize that those issues and characters were handled well by the show’s writers because it was very accurate to today’s teenage generation. And those scenarios transitioned nicely into serious conversations and real-to-life decisions about teenage sex and dating. 

The first season ended with a cliff-hangar, left America in love with Kyle’s innocent character, and with Kyle XY as ABC Family’s flagship show- oh yeah, did I forget to mention that this show airs on ABC Family during the coveted 8:00 PM family hour? Because it does! 

I waited nearly a year in anticipation, wondering if one of my new favorite shows would return for a season two. And when late spring 2007 rolled around, I was not disappointed to learn that innocent Kyle and his dysfunctional, yet loving family were returning to the 8:00 PM time-slot on ABC Family for its summer television season. My wife and I were thrilled!

The second season started strong with new twists and turns, new characters, and new love developing. My thoughts the previous summer of this being one of the best shows on television were proven once again to be right, but all that changed with one disgusting excuse for an episode!

Summer is far too busy at my household. I am a youth pastor and within a one moth period of time I am responsible for a three day fundraising booth at Oregon’s biggest Art Festival, a four day youth camp, and a 10 day fundraising booth at the Oregon State Fair with extensive preparation, set-up, and take-down taking place in between. While all of these things take place, I have to maintain my regular job duties as well. This summer, I have also been volunteering my time co-hosting a two hour radio talk-show everyday from 7- 9 AM while all of these other events have taken place.

I’m not saying these things to complain, just to show how much I anticipate a 1 hour break from the craziness while I watch Kyle XY.

Because of the fundraiser at the art festival and because of the youth camp that followed it two days later; my wife and I missed two episodes of Kyle XY- Thank God for Digital Video Recorders.

Finally after these two exhausting events, my wife and I had a couple of hours free to watch the two episodes of Kyle XY that we had missed. As we sat down to watch, we were totally unaware that we were about to be preached to. We wanted to sit down and watch an entertaining show, but instead we sat down to a sermon in which all of the characters on Kyle XY were the preachers- really.

We were not preached to about the environment, about domestic violence, about the dangers of drinking and driving (although that issue was cleverly disguised in the episode as a tool to preach the other subject), about pro-choice, about drugs, or even about religion. We were preached a one hour (if we wouldn’t have turned it off half way through) sermon on homosexuality. And no, homosexuality was not condemned; it was praised and held high above all other minorities (as if it was a minority to begin with- an insult to African Americans- a subject for another blog.)

The show’s premise revolved around a school dance in which the girls asked the boys out (traditionally known in most parts as a Sadie Hawkins Dance). Kyle didn’t know how to dance- like the only thing he doesn’t know how to do- so he is taught how to dance by his foster brother, Josh Trager (played annoyingly by Jean-Luc Bilodeau – ?! – ). Josh tells Kyle that dance is a form of self expression and that it essentially represents freedom. Freedom and self-expression become the themes for this episode. Josh acts awkward about dancing with another guy, which causes Kyle to question why it’s not acceptable for two guys to dance with each other and date each other and Kyle instantly, becomes ABC Family’s gay-card hero character.

During the episode Josh’s potential girlfriend, Andy Jensen whom he previously thought was a boy in an online first-person-shooter video game, mentions to him that she will not be inviting him to the dance because she already has “dates” to bring with her. (I didn’t end up watching the whole episode as I mentioned earlier, but I think that the dates she referred to were a male homosexual couple that she invited so they could come as a couple) This conversation with Josh leads her to tell everyone that she is not from a traditional family (ABC Family’s tagline is “A new kind of family” by the way), but instead has two moms. Any younger viewers who haven’t learned about sex yet are now forced to wonder why they don’t have two moms also. It must also be normal for two women to have a baby together, right? Surely that must be possible. Who gives a  #@*^% about the dad?! He was just a stupid sperm donor, right?  

Another plot detail was that Lori Trager and her slutty friend Hillary did not have guys to invite to the dance, so they wanted to come together as friends, but the school would not sell tickets to them because they were considered a ‘same-sex-couple’. This infuriated the girls and they instantly changed from selfish-self-absorbed-sleazy-girl characters to liberal-gay-rights-social-activist-protestors in about (oh?) two seconds.

So Lori, Hillary, Andy Jensen, Amanda Bloom, and of course Kyle mount a protest in the school halls during class time by hanging up posters disagreeing with the school’s same-sex-couple policy. The principle, which is betrayed as a bigot, catches them and calls them into his office- not because they were ditching class, but because they disagreed with his ‘bigoted’ same-sex-couple policy.

The next scene has the Trager kids in the principle’s office with their mom Nicole, who had been called in as well.  Mrs. Trager, being the truth-is-relative-post-modern-mom that she is, is not mad at her children and instantly begins to question the principle’s authority in front of her children. She tells the principle that the school has no right to prevent same-sex-couples from attending the dance. The principle informs Mrs. Trager that this rule is to uphold “certain moral standards”, to which Nicole Trager quickly snaps back,” Certain moral standards are your own personal prejudices!”  

So in this scene Mrs. Trager teaches her kids that they don’t need to respect authority or obey it if they don’t agree with it- this same scenario is played out at another part of the show where Amanda disobeys her mom to be with Kyle. She also teaches them, and the audience, that if someone doesn’t agree with homosexuality, that they are prejudice. And once again, to equate homosexuality with race, nationality, culture, or religion is an insult to everyone who is a true minority.

Because of what the kids did at school, the principle bans them from attending the dance all together. So in revolt to this, Andy puts together an alternate dance at the local juice shop where same sex couples are welcomed and praised. While she is talking to Lori Trager about planning this alternate dance she tells her why it is that she is planning the alternate dance: “I don’t have a lot of tolerance for other’s close-minded crap!”

Andy’s statement is contradictory in nature. She says that she does not have tolerance for other’s close-minded crap, but by saying that, she is admitting to Lori that she is close-minded when it comes to those who do not support homosexual actions. She, by her own words, has closed minded crap and is intolerant towards those who do not agree with her viewpoint.

At this point the show climaxed at the alternate dance, and of course, there were lots of kids there who thought it was ‘cool’. What happened next was appalling. Declan, Lori’s now ex-boyfriend, walked into the party to support Lori in her involvement with the dance. Declan was joined by Charlie who had previously been Amanda’s boyfriend and was villainized for cheating on her with…Hillary. Charlie then proceeds to ask Lori and Hillary when “they had hopped on the lesbian granola bus?” To which Lori and Hillary responded by saying,” oh, let’s try it” and proceeded to passionately kiss each other for 4 full seconds in front of Charlie. And when they were done kissing Lori said, “if only to never kiss a cheating-homophobic-jerk like you…”

So here the show is again preaching to the audience: saying that if you refer to someone as a lesbian ad use the word granola in the same sentence, that you are a homophobe.

It’s funny because while I was watching the show, I was taking notes on my PDA with predictive text. When entering the word homosexuality, before I even got to “H-O-M” (I had only typed in “H-O”) the word homophobe was the 4^th word choice. And when I typed in “H-O-M”, homophobe was the 2^nd word choice. And finally when I typed in “H-O-M-O”, homophobe was the 1^st word suggestion and it was actually placed into the document I was typing. As if the words homophone, homonyms, homoerectus, homosapien, or maybe…I don’t know…HOMOSEXUAL would not come up first!

My phone assumed that if anyone would dare try to type the word ‘homosexuality’, that they surely meant to type in homophobe because no one would dare type in homosexual or homosexuality. They would only type in homophobe to describe some prejudice bigot’s close-mindedness towards homosexual…I mean ga…I mean…lesbia…I mean…same-sex-couples. Yeah, that’s right…same-sex-couples because that’s the appropriate term to use now right? Because whatever anybody thinks is right, is right for them…right?

This is when I turned off the show, deleted it from my DVR, and deleted any future recordings of it from my DVR. All because the show took a break- for one whole episode- from their normally excellent story telling to preach to their audience that it is good to be a homosexual. To preach to their audience that homosexuals should be praised for their self-expressionism. To preach to their audience that it’s normal to have same-sex-parents. To preach to their audience that girls should fool around with other girls even if they’re not “lesbians.” And to preach to their audience that anyone who does not agree with homosexuality is a prejudice-bigot-homophobe-jerk!

So am I a homophobe? I don’t know. I have a gay brother-in-law who I love very much, who is a very close friend, and who I don’t act differently around. I jut don’t agree with the homosexual lifestyle. The Bible blatantly calls it sin. And if I have to side with either the Bible or post-modern-thinking, I’ll always side with the Bible because it is the infallible Word of God! But besides that I love homosexuals just as much as I love the next person and I hope the best for them, I just hope that they find Jesus and/or turn from their sins like every single person should. 

It would have been fine if the show simply had a gay character, because that’s what real life is like: there are some people who are gay out there. But it’s entirely different to preach the homosexual agenda to a national audience during family hour on a family network’s flagship show! ABC Family is a family network by their own name and now they think that they can impose certain “family values” on the families who watch their programming. ABC Family is by the way owned by Disney which happens to be the most recognizable family company on the planet, a company which by the way, has a gay pride day at their world famous theme parks. What’s next, gay Disney animated movies, Same-Sex-Couple Land at the Magic Kingdom, gay themed Disney Channel Shows? Really, where does this end?

I do foresee the day in America where any talk against homosexuality is considered hate-speech and will be punishable as a hate crime. It’s already happening in Europe. It’s only a matter of time before our freedom of speech is taken away to protect a small group’s freedom of choice- which those who would speak out against their sins never wanted to take away. This episode of Kyle XY was just a small step towards the inevitable, unless we turn to the Lord and ask for His goodness and mercy to continue to shine upon this land and prevent such things from happening.

THINK!