The Grandma Agneses of the World

WARNING: 

Today I’m writing about The Real O’Neals.  I know.  I can almost hear some cries of indignation over the sound of eyes rolling.  I know it seems like I’ve become your one stop shop for commentary about this ABC sitcom.  I wasn’t going to blog about it anymore (at least for a while) but then I watched last night’s episode and I just can’t get some thoughts out of my head.

So if you’re tired of me blogging about The Real O’Neals, now’s your chance to click out of my blog.  Come back tomorrow and I’ll have something else for you.

Back to our irregularly scheduled blog post.

I don’t know if you’ve ever participated in a live Twitter conversation during a TV show but it’s quite an experience.  When you tweet during The Real O’Neals you not only get to connect with other fans of the show but pretty much the entire cast is there, sitting on the virtual couch, with all of the fans.  They crack jokes with the fans.  They give behind the scenes commentary to the fans.  And, most importantly, they support the fans.  I don’t think there’s been a week that’s gone by that fans haven’t tweeted their gratitude to cast members for validating them or helping them come out.  It’s powerful stuff.

Last night was episode 107 entitled “The Real Grandma.”  In short, Eileen (the terrifying and judgmental, very religious mother, played by Martha Plimpton) is visited by her mother (an even more terrifying, judgmental, and religious mother) played by the incredibly talented Frances Conroy of American Horror Story fame.  Eileen, who has always struggled for her mother’s approval, hides the fact that she and her husband, Pat (Jay R. Ferguson), are divorcing and that Kenny (Noah Galvin) is gay.   This doesn’t go over well with Kenny who eventually defies his mother and comes out to his grandmother by presenting her with a rainbow cake.

Grandma Agnes doesn’t take the news very well and announces to the family that Kenny has ruined cake and rainbows for her forever.  She also declares her intention to stay until “she saves Kenny’s soul.”

Meanwhile Kenny is pressuring his mother to admit to her mother that she’s planning to divorce Pat.  So, in order for Eileen to come out to her mother about the divorce, she plans a good old fashioned corned beef and cabbage dinner.  During the course of the meal, Grandma Agnes says to Kenny, “I know you think I’m a silly old woman and you’ve been mocking me and my beliefs.  But even if you don’t care what I think, you should care about what God thinks….You don’t accept that God doesn’t accept you.  He thinks you’re broken and I do too.”

The screen is then filled with Kenny’s face and you can see the shock and the pain these words have caused.  We hear Kenny doing a voice over, saying “I didn’t think anything grandma said could upset me, but I was wrong.”

My initial reaction was, “Oh, I’ve got to blog this!  This is exactly why I wrote what I wrote yesterday about One Million Moms!”  But, like I said, the ol’ blog has been pretty The Real O’Neals heavy of late and I was reluctant to do it. 

I finished the episode.  It has a spectacular ending.  I won’t give the details beyond saying that Grandma Agnes tries to force the family to go to church that evening.  The family ends up going, without Grandma Agnes and at Kenny’s suggestion.  Hold that thought.

If you’ve read many of the posts on my blog you will have noticed by now a strong theme in what I’ve shared:  Religion, over the centuries, has done horrible things to good people simply because the devotees of the religion subscribe to a superstitious view of the world, are legalistic about thingstheir holy books say without even actually knowingwhat those books say, or simply can’t make room in their worldview for continuous revelation ( the fact that God is still speaking despite the silence of biblical authors, namely through the vehicle of science).  As a result, religion, specifically Christianity (of which I am a practitioner), has killed people, maimed people, caused untold psychological damage to people…all because of something zealous adherents couldn’t understand and innocents can’t change.

When Agnes spoke to Kenny at the dining room table and declared that God could not accept Kenny because he was gay, I could feel the silence in every room in which this show was being watched.  I felt winded.  It may have just been a talented actress delivering a line to an emotive actor on the screen, but it was like a punch to the gut.  Why?  Because I don’t think there’s an LGBT person alive who hasn’t had someone they love or someone who loved them speak to them like this.  At some point in every LGBT person’s life a well-meaning but woefully ignorant loved one expresses this same concern:  God does not love you because you are too broken.

Here’s a newsflash, Grandma Agneses of the world:  In our Christian faith, it is precisely for the broken that Jesus came (Mark 2.17).  And it wasn’t to judge them, but to love them and bring them back into community despite the judgments and preconceived ideas of the righteous, holier-than-thou members of the greater faith community.  In other words, Grandma Agneses, Jesus came to bring the Kennys of the world back into the fold despite your objections.

And this is what’s so incredibly sad about the Grandma Agneses of the world and the One Million Moms of the world and the Focuses on the Family of the world and all of the North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee politicians of the world who have absolutely no idea what their Christian faith is all about.  It breaks my heart to see what these people do to innocent people in the crosshairs of their judgment but it breaks my heart more to know how far from the center of the Christian faith these people are.

This is why I wrote what I wrote yesterday about the OneMillion Moms organization.  Anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow view of what is right, moral, and acceptable to God is an affront to God and by extension them.  The problem is that the theology of these groups is ill-formed at best, handed down and institutionalized for hundreds of years.  The world has obviously changed and our understanding of the human condition has developed.  They simply can’t deal with the reality of the world we live in.  It’s easier for them to kick and scream and flail against change in an effort to make the world to conform to their expectations.  And, of course, the world pushes back, saying, “No, it’s time for you to change your expectations of the world.”  And upon hearing that, these arch-conservative, para-religious activist groups cry out that they are being victims of religious oppression. 

Disagreement is not oppression.  If you want to see real religious oppression, real religious persecution, I suggest visiting extremist countries where people are actually killed for their beliefs.  My stomach turned a long time ago when I heard about a little boy, about ten years old, who was a Christian.  When his master found out, he was driven out into the desert, his feet nailed to a board, and he was left there to die.  That is what I remember when I hear the likes of Kim Davis, Mike Huckabee, One Million Moms, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, Ted Cruz and all the others whine about their sense of religious persecution because they can’t seem to bully people with fear of divine judgment anymore.

So you remember that thought I told you to hang onto?  When I said that the O’Neal family ended up going to church anyway even without Grandma Agnes and her pressure?  It was Kenny’s suggestion.  “I’d still like to go to church.” he says.  I think this is what ultimately tipped the balance and brought me to the computer to write this entry, dear reader.  You see, throughout this ordeal of coming out and despite Grandma Agnes’ declaration of God’s judgment, Kenny still feels that connection to his faith. 

Too many LGBT people have been driven away from their faith because of the Grandma Agneses of the world.  In their view it’s the LGBT people who have left the church, probably because “they just can’t endure the reminder of how broken they are.”  In reality, it’s the church that has left the LGBT people.  Even if I subscribed to the view that being gay was somehow sinful (which I don’t and I can explain why in another post if anyone wants to know—just ask), where did the authors of the four biblical Gospels always show Jesus?  Not in the fancy synagogues hanging with the Grandma Agneses of his time.  He was always with the people that the Grandma Agnes crowd deemed to sinful to hang around.  So, Christians, if you’re going to say you follow Christ (which you do when you claim the title), maybe you should spend time with the people you think are sinners and love them as Jesus did instead of sitting astride your high horse looking down on the broken you think God can’t accept.

When a woman suffers verbal and emotional abuse from her husband and leaves, most of us say, “We support you!  No one should have to endure that!”  When LGBT people suffer verbal and emotional abuse from the Church and leave, most people don’t make the connection.

We need to make that connection.  If not in a religious sense and context (because, again, I recognize the plurality of belief and no belief that exist in the world), then just in a decent human being sense and context. 

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Get Real, One Million Moms

I am so tired of reading news releases like this.

The group, One Million Moms, has been attacking the television comedy The Real O’Neals since before the show even aired its pilot episode.  The social activists, on their website, loudly declare:

"The Real O'Neals" mocks Christianity and insults Catholicism. 1MM recognizes this show ridicules people of faith, and Christians across America are offended by it.

You can read more about the group’s most recent attack and attempt to bombard sponsors of the show by clicking here. 

Here’s the thing that certain people don’t understand:  Just because you don’t agree with a thing and just because you find it offensive doesn’t mean everyone needs to agree with you and find the thing offensive.  I know this might come as a surprise to some members of the Church considering you’re still operating under the faulty impression that the Church is the center of the universe, but it’s not.  It hasn’t been since the collapse of colonialism and the end of Christendom.  Which, by the way, as a Christian, I find to be a most happy circumstance because now the majority of people connected to the Church are connected because they feel called to be and not because someone with power and authority is forcing them to be.

It’s the same thing as this article about the Benham brothers in North Carolina claiming that

““the newest fruit of the vine of Sodom is the sexual revolution — and it’s poisoning our land. It has nearly taken over everything and is forcing itself on everyone.”

Again, this might shock some people, but a minority group struggling for equality has been labeled as “the end of civilization as we know it” since the very beginning.  Giving women the vote was going to destroy our country.  Civil rights was going to destroy our country.  Freeing slaves was going to destroy our country.  Letting the Irish into the United States was going to destroy our country.

Do you know what’s going to destroy the United States?  Ignorance.  And it seems that anti-LGBT groups have a surplus of ignorance.

Look at the press release from One Million Moms listing the complaints over The Real O’Neals.

·        Brothers view p-rn on laptop. Gay p-rn made to appear normal and acceptable. Comments between brothers and between father and sons show no form of guilt in watching p-rn. Jokes and other references such as p-rnado and p-rnward are made.

·        Gay character and his brother observe that "10 percent of the population is gay," and suggest that most of those who object to gay p-rn are h-mophobic. In reality, The Centers for Disease Control reports that 1.6 percent of the population is h-mos-xual. That is a far cry from 10 percent, but since a big part of the show's agenda is to normalize h-mos-xuality along with other sins, it makes sense for the show to lie.

·        Student at Catholic school holds up middle finger, which is pixelated.

·        The daughter skips church, doubts God, disrespects priest as she verbally backs him into a corner, and he (the head of their church) fails at answering her questions.

·        ABC network refers to this highly dysfunctional family as "the perfect Irish-Catholic family."

·        Foul language (purposely uses every word imaginable).

·        One of the show's producers is anti-Christian b-got Dan Savage, and the show is said to be loosely based on his life.

I watched this episode (found here on Hulu) and thought it was one of the best.  I recognize that’s just my opinion.  So let’s look at 1MM’s points and direct them to some facts.

1.     According to a survey conducted in Canada (and remember a survey is self-report and will always skew conservative in its results as people doing the self-report will never be completely honest—especially a survey of kids), 40% of boys between grades 4 and 11 frequently look at porn online.  Now, I’m not going to argue the pro’s and con’s of the porn industry.  I have an opinion and I can share that opinion elsewhere.  It’s enough to say that this is the REALITY of the world we are living in being reflected back to us on our television screens.  Gone are the days of Donna Reed wearing pearls and cleaning the house and cooking dinner with a smile on her face and a song in heart while women at home knew a completely different story.  Television—the best television and the most compelling television—holds life up in front of us to be ironic, comedic, or to make a statement.  I would like to think in this scene The Real O’Neals is doing all three. 

And, seriously, if you can’t even be adult enough to write the word “porn” or “homophobic” or even “bigot” without leaving out a letter, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed access to the internet.

2.     I actually agree with 1MM on their point regarding “10% of the world’s population is gay.”  1MM cites this report from the Centers forDisease Control that uses data collected in a separate study in 2013.  This report does indicate that 1.6% of the respondents to the survey identified as gay.  The problem is, of course, two-fold:  The report relies on self-report data from a survey taken of adults ages 18 and over, the majority of which are from a time in which they could not be LGBT and were forced into a non-LGBT lifestyle (something I’m most familiar with).  The second problem is that the report is using collateral data from a completely different study.  What this means is that the method of collection for the data leading to the CDC report was not designed to procure accurate data for a report of this nature.

A more appropriate report, doing what it was designed to do and reporting a much more accurate picture of the LGBT demographic, would be this one.  Again, self-report is problematic but it is the only way we can determine these things.  But this survey reports that 52% of school kids between the ages of 13 and 20 identify as LGBT. 

Or here’s another report I used in this post on suicide in the LGBT community.  The study was conducted by the National School Climate Survey in 2013 and of the 8,000 students surveyed randomly, 60% identified as LGBT.  The survey then moves forward to highlight the struggles that LGBT people face because groups like 1MM want to ignore the REALITY that LGBT people exist, are normal, and have every right to see LGBT people on TV whether 1MM’s think its “decent” or not.

3.     OMG!  A student in a Catholic school flipped the bird and the nuns didn’t come running with their rulers!

4.     I want to take a minute and talk about “doubting God.”  EVERYONE doubts God.  The opposite of faith is not doubt.  The opposite of faith is certainty.  Faith is belief in what is unseen.  Certainty is created by empirical evidence. 

This is again the problem with Christians who don’t know what it actually is they’re reading.  One of the Greek words translated as “doubt” is diakrinō but doubt (as in “disbelief”) is not what the word means.  It means to oppose.  So in Matthew 21.21 when Jesus says, “Jesus answered them, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.” The word “doubt” there?  Yeah, that means “oppose” or “make a distinction against.”

Doubt gets a bad rep from Bible thumping Christians.  If you’re not doubting your faith, you’re not growing your faith.  If you’re so certain your faith is right, then your faith is stagnant and you’re not growing.  You’ve got a system, not a faith.

5.     “The perfect Irish family?”  Yeah, I don’t think 1MM knows how comedy works. 

6.     Foul language “purposefully uses every word imaginable?”  I don’t know.  I can imagine quite a few that haven’t been said on the show.  A lot of them people can hear at 1MM rallies outside of Planned Parenthood clinics. 

So, here it is in a nutshell, One Million Moms and Benham Brothers and anyone else who thinks that a majority group can be oppressed by a minority group in its fight for equality:  You can have your ill-informed, ill-formed opinions but the rest of the world is not required to adopt your line of thinking no matter how “God-inspired” you think your opinion is.

Are you listening, Kim Davis?  Or is the hypocrisy in your life too loud?

Feel free to hold onto your outdated, outmoded, consistently proven as implausible and inaccurate convictions in order to combat the tides of change that are about to overtake you.  But remember, One Million Moms, if your name is any indication of your true numbers and each of you is the mother of say two children (on average), that’s two million kids.  That means, according to the survey I cited about, 1,040,000 of your kids are LGBT.  You are NOT doing them any favors with your rhetoric and your campaign to remove a role model—albeit a comedic one—from their lives.

Seriously.  It’s time to get real. 

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