“Tube Taboo”

By: Steve Huston

In the earlier years of the Reverend Donald E. Wildmon’s ministry, he used to often raise the question “Who is America’s most influential evangelist?” The answer people would generally provide was the Reverend Billy Graham.

Wildmon would respond “No. The most leading American evangelist was Norman Lear producer of ‘All in the Family’ and ‘Maude.'” Wildmon’s point was that Norman Lear was using the ever increasing influence of television to propagate Lear’s world view of secularism, pro-abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, lewdness, etc… July 15, 2008

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“Before ‘All in the Family,’ you could turn on the TV during prime time hours … and you could assume that pretty much everything, with the exception of news, was relatively appropriate (for kids),” Thompson says. “That is an assumption you definitely cannot make now.”
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Quoting from the News Advance
Lynchburg, VA

By Casey Gillis on May. 29, 2008

The new CBS series “Swingtown” opens on an airplane, after a new flight attendant has just spilled a cup of coffee onto the pilot, Tom.

Crying, she apologizes and worries that his wife will be upset with her.

“My wife,” he assures her with a leer, “is gonna love you.” He’s not lying. A second later, the camera cuts to said wife, getting out of bed while Tom and the flight attendant continue to go at it in the background.

Set in the summer of 1976, “Swingtown” is about, simply put, swingers.

Tom (a sleazy, handlebar moustache-sporting Grant Show) and his wife, Trina (Lana Parrilla), live a lavish lifestyle, regularly hosting parties where marrieds are free to hook up with each other’s spouses in a basement “playroom.”

So far, at least in the pilot, the actual sex isn’t shown. But one could argue that the concept itself is pretty risqué.

Sex is everywhere you look on television these days, from scripted fare like “Swingtown” to reality shows (the most recent installment of “The Bachelor” actually showed one of the ladies taking off her underwear while “slipping into something a little more comfortable”).

“Up until the 1970s, sex didn’t exist on television,” says Robert Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University and the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “Somewhere in the 1980s, it caught up and exceeded it. Now people on TV are having way more sex than (real) people are.”

A 2005 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan research group, found that the number of sex scenes on television had nearly doubled since 1998.

That was three years ago. You can only imagine what those numbers would be today.

Pay-for-cable networks like HBO and Showtime, which are not advertiser-supported, can get away with the mature themes, nudity and sexual content, while basic cable stations like FX and TNT have been pushing the envelope for quite awhile (see FX’s “Nip/Tuck,” “The Shield” and “Rescue Me,” and TNT’s “Saving Grace,” which opened its first episode with a sex scene that left little to the imagination).

Now network TV is getting in on the action – literally. “It’s not new to say there’s sex on TV, but there is more and more of it in more places,” Craig Thomas, the co-creator of CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother,” recently told TV Guide.

That series – which airs at 8:30 p.m., smack-dab in the middle of what was once considered television’s “family hour” – often features the sex-ploits of ladies man Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and, last season, alluded to main character Ted (Josh Radnor) having a threesome.

The CW recently raised eyebrows with an ad campaign for “Gossip Girl” that featured its teen characters clinched in passionate embraces and the expression “OMFG,” a more profane take on “Oh my God” (we’ll let you guess what the “f” stands for).

So what’s the deal? Why is there so much sex and sexual innuendo on TV?

“I think we’re a nation that is simultaneously both incredibly obsessed by sexuality and, oftentimes, embarrassed by it,” Thompson says.

In generations past, sex was one of many taboo topics.

“I think society’s overall attitudes (have changed), and you can see this just by walking out the door and looking at how someone is dressing at age 11,” he says.

Believe it or not, there was a time when you couldn’t even say the word “pregnant” on TV, much less depict the conception. In 1953, CBS forbade “I Love Lucy” writers from using the word to describe that the comedian was expecting. “Expectant” or “having a baby” were OK, but “pregnant” wasn’t, according to the television history Web site Teletronic.

“Into the late ’60s, husbands and wives slept in separate beds,” Thompson says. “Forget premarital sex. There was no marital sex. “It was almost as though broadcast (television) was this parallel universe.”

Thompson says that there were occasional moments that pushed the envelope then, but the real tipping point came with the 1971 debut of “All in the Family,” which, “in one fell swoop, changed everything.”

The sitcom starred Carroll O’Connor as grumpy, politically incorrect bigot Archie Bunker. From the get-go, the series wasn’t afraid to tackle hot-button issues like racism, homosexuality, rape and impotence, Thompson says.

“It was literally overnight. That show did things that nobody had done before,” he says. “Because it was so successful, it completely opened the floodgates.”

A year later, “All in the Family” spin-off “Maude” aired an episode in which the main character had an abortion, two months before Roe v. Wade made them legal, according to TV Guide.

The later years of the decade brought us what was often referred to as “Jiggle TV,” Thompson says, and included the likes of “Charlie’s Angels,” “Fantasy Island” and “Three’s Company.”

More serious topics were tackled by series like “China Beach,” “St. Elsewhere” and “21 Jump Street” in the 1980s. There was even an entire “Moonlighting” episode that took place inside Maddie’s uterus, Thompson says.

So by the time we get to the 1990s and the debut of “NYPD Blue,” “the boundaries have already been broken,” says Thompson. Enter Dennis Franz and his “Blue” costars, who all upped the ante by regularly showing off their naked butts during the series’ run. TV Guide reports that the premiere episode, which aired in 1993, featured an extended sex scene and the exposed behinds of stars David Caruso and Amy Brenneman.

And where a three-second kiss between Roseanne Barr and Mariel Hemingway on a 1994 episode of “Roseanne” caused an uproar, the recent “Grey’s Anatomy” season finale featured a full on make-out session between two of the show’s female doctors.

Even a seemingly innocent family sitcom like “Everybody Loves Raymond” is guilty of mining sex for laughs.

“That was filled with sexual jokes, a lot more than people ever give it credit for,” Thompson says.

Currently, the airwaves are filled with shows like Showtime’s “The Tudors,” in which King Henry VIII, um, gets around, and the short-lived Fox comedy “Unhitched,” which featured a character being sexually assaulted by a monkey.

The teens on “Gossip Girl” party and sleep around like “Sex and the City” characters, and those crazy kids over on “Grey’s” have been hooking up in the supply closets and exam rooms for four seasons now.

“Before ‘All in the Family,’ you could turn on the TV during prime time hours … and you could assume that pretty much everything, with the exception of news, was relatively appropriate (for kids),” Thompson says. “That is an assumption you definitely cannot make now.”
http://www.the-burg.com/blogit/entry/tube_taboo

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Personal word:

Some of you reading this have a clear recollection of how things have unfolded through the varieties of televion programs that have propagated increasing levels of degeneracy: “All in the Family,” “Maude,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Dallas,” “Bay Watch,” “NYPD Blue,” “Ellen,” “Life as We Know It,” “Desperate Housewives,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “SwingTown”, ad infinitum.

I applaud the many who have fought so hard and well to hold back the tide of such perversion. We have heroes in ministry and in our midst including parents and grandparents who have stood and stand for wholesomeness, decency, purity starting right within their very own living rooms and bedrooms.

I’m thankful, too, especially for the working power of the Holy Spirit through the Living Word which He uses to exhort and encourage us to “place no evil thing before your eyes.” [Psalm 101:3a]

For a heart that will heed God’s Word and Spirit,
victory over the bondage of darkness is attainable and it will always be attainable because His Word is Truth!

Faith IS the victory that overcomes the world.

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Match Challenge of $15,000. We look for evidences of God’s continued pleasure with us and with our ministry calling and stance. The latest evidence is a very timely match grant presented by an anonymous donor whose challenge is to call out to those who care about this ministry but haven’t given for a significant period of time. Here are the details of this gracious Match Challenge.

” … a “Summer Matching Gift Pledge”. I will match all new (from anyone who has not given to ADA in 2007 or 2008) gifts received from June 1- August 31 up to a total of $15,000. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for all you do to uphold purity and holiness.”

Thank you for helping us stay in the battle for Truth and decency.
https://americandecency.org/folder.php?f=donate

Bill Johnson, president

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American Decency Association
Bill Johnson, President
P.O. Box 202
Fremont, MI 49412
ph: 231-924-4050
www.americandecency.org

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