Just in time for Pride: FX airs anti-gay religious right tirade

On Tuesday evening, the cable television network FX aired an episode of its reality show "30 Days" in which the show put an opponent of gay adoption in a home with two gay men who have adopted four foster children. The results, as you might imagine, were enlightening for the show’s subjects and viewers alike. But the context FX put the subject matter in left LGBT advocates angry.

The premise behind "30 Days" is to drop an individual in a situation that they are unfamiliar with for 30 days. Tuesday’s episode featured Tom and Dennis Patrick, their four adopted foster children and an opponent of gay adoption, simply known as Kati. It also featured claims by the religious right without any analysis or fact-checking. Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council said, “Homosexuality is associated with higher rates of sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse, and those are all reasons for us to be concerned about placing children into that kind of setting.”

Before the show aired, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD) asked FX to either edit Sprigg’s unsupported statements or allow a "credible social science" expert to analyze his statements, but the network refused.

GLAAD responded in an email to supporters, "While there is no credible scientific research that backs Sprigg’s claim—and much that disputes it—the episode presents his assertion as if it were fact and offers no credible social science experts or child health authorities to challenge Sprigg’s assertion. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the Child Welfare League of America, and many other child health and social services authorities who support parenting by qualified lesbian and gay parents dispute Sprigg’s claim."

Sprigg is no stranger to controversial statements. When asked about whether the nonresident partners of gay and lesbian couples should be able to immigrate to the United States he responded, "I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society."

Did the gay adoption opponent change her ways in 30 days? No one knows but her — she’s not granting interviews, but Patrick told AfterEllen, an online lesbian entertainment magazine, that he didn’t think so.

"She did these at-home interviews that we didn’t see, that we didn’t know about until we saw the episode on DVD," he said. "But it didn’t seem like she was coming into it to explore beliefs as much as it was to defend her beliefs. So, and I think because most of her objections were religious in nature, there’s no way that was going to change in 30 days."