According to a review leaked by Entertainment Weekly on Friday, this coming week's episode of the hit TV show GLEE is slated to be a "game-changer."
In terms of content in the "family hour" on network television they are most certainly correct.
This week's episode is dangerous for family viewing for several reasons, the most significant being that regardless of orientation the episode will justify unsafe sex. (And we're not talking about the fallacy that says you're protected if you use a condom.)
The episode portrays sexual interaction between high-school children, who in all honesty, are too young to understand the responsibility of sex, and as nearly every study in America shows, would be far better off waiting to engage in sexual activity for a good 5 to 7 years--not to mention the concept of actually being in a monogamous marital union.
Considering that PHD level research analysis demonstrates that:
"Sexually active teens are less likely to be happy, more likely to be depressed, and more likely to attempt suicide. Teenage girls who are sexually active are three times more likely to be depressed and three times more likely to attempt suicide than girls who are not active. Teenage boys who are sexually active are more than twice as likely to be depressed and are almost ten times more likely to attempt suicide than boys who are not active."
Then even considering an episode romanticizing the activity is irresponsible.
But again that barely scratches the surface of the dangerous message this episode sends. This week's episode also reportedly portrays the deflowering of two "couples," on the show, presumably of equal significance and importance.
I use the word presumably because at present those that self identify as active homosexuals in the United States population number between 2-4% nationally, yet according to the producers of GLEE, you'd get the idea that it's practically an even split with heterosexual couples.
The episode is reported to portray the sexual intercourse of the two couples of equal moral and emotional importance in the lives of the two fictional couples.
The lie contained therein is so harmful, it is hard to know where to even begin. But let’s tip the jar just a little:
Suicide rates amongst males who engage in homosexual sexual activity in teen years through age 17--in recent studies--have pointed to be as high as 4.1 times the rate of heterosexual teens of the same age. Amongst teens and young adults, multiple sources, multiple researchers, and even homosexual activists groups themselves admit the rate is thought to be 3 times the rate of heterosexual young adults. Some studies have attempted to debunk this number, but when you search the deeper layers of evidence, they claim "no one can know the percentage of gay teen suicides."
Other disturbing statistics show that male homosexuals incur 67 times the number of cases of intestinal parasites, 27 times the cases of entamoeba histolytica, and 13 times the cases of giardia lamblia, a disease that is deadly in third world countries.
If the producers of GLEE really claimed to “love” homosexual males they would develop a story line where two boys were committed to each other but sexually abstinent for the sake of safety alone.
But not this GLEE and not these producers...
It is more important to them to push the envelope, tell a few more lies, like "choice doesn't matter" and "the only thing important is that you do what feels good" and the health, safety and well being of young people be damned.
The Entertainment Weekly preview also favorably discusses how the two homosexual male characters are "aggressively" pursued by a third, and the three depart on a triple date to Lima's (the town GLEE is supposedly set in) only "gay" bar Scandals.
Entertainment Weekly professes:
"I can't think of another network series that's taken a teenage gar relationship so far or been so progressive." In essence, code language for, "we're making this fantasy up right from the gay garden of our own imagination, completely disconnecting it from anything resembling reality, and idealizing it to such a dishonest length, even homosexuals (who know the truth of the struggles of their choices in life) will not recognize it."
Teen sexual projection in the "family hour" (8pm EST) is problematic enough for a show pronounced as "family friendly" in 2010 by the Hollywood community.
Telling flat out lies about the outcomes of such sexual interaction is too much.
And while it is uncomfortable to be presented with these facts on the demographic this show is attempting to reach, it is much more sad, to open yet one more newspaper to read a story of a teen who got caught up with such choices--to never be told the truth--and who decided to end it all.
And for the teens who will be impacted by these subtle messages of the hit TV show, it is completely fair to hold GLEE, it's writers, and producers responsible for the subterfuge.
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