Last week we mentioned that Liberty Counsel had filed a complaint with the FCC against ABC “for airing an outrageously lewd and filthy performance by Adam Lambert on November 22, 2009 during the 2009 American Music Awards.”
The complaint has apparently led ABC to cancel several upcoming appearances by Lambert on other shows and Liberty Counsel’s most militant homophobe Matt Barber is quite pleased:
“The issue is not so much about homosexuality, although I believe the preponderance of Americans find public hyper-sexualized acts of homosexuality particularly off-putting,” Matt Barber said. “But the issue was more of indecency and what is decency. And frankly the issue is one of law. We believe this performance met the threshold for violation of federal law and violation of FCC regulations. And the Supreme Court has held time and again that there’s not a First Amendment right to engage in public indecency as evidenced by the outcry and complaints that poured into ABC. We believe that this violated contemporary community standards in terms of what is and what isn’t decent.”
…
“I would say this is inappropriate period,” Barber said. “This is not HBO or some of these cable networks where that type of indecency and filth has come to be expected. This is television where people just flipping through channels could have stumbled onto that. People unaware of what’s coming down the pike in terms of the indecency being performed. And it’s just really, frankly, not appropriate for network television, period, to mimic one man performing oral sex on another man.”
The LA Times also asked Barber why Liberty Counsel had filed a complaint against the Lambert incident and not, say, against Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl “wardrobe malfunction”:
Many of those critics say Lambert is being targeted because he is a gay male, as Janet Jackson, who opened the American Music Awards, grabbed the crotch of a male dancer and went unscathed by critics.
The director of cultural affairs for Liberty Counsel told The Times today that his firm was not aware of Jackson’s performance.
Really? That’s odd, because just days after the Jackson incident, Mat Staver and Liberty Counsel issued a press release about it:
Mathew Staver, President and General Counsel of Liberty Counsel, which is sponsoring the Day of Purity project, commented, “Janet Jackson apologized for her actions by stating that she was sorry ‘if” she offended anyone. I have to ask, did her actions offend you? If so, are you going to sit back and do nothing, allowing our pop culture to corrupt the minds of our youth, or are you going to do something about it? The Day of Purity gives all of us an immediate opportunity to make a difference, to change lives, to restore our culture.”
As far as we can tell, Liberty Counsel never filed a FCC complaint about Jackson, nor did they have anything to say when Pink did exactly the same thing as Lambert at the Bilboard Awards.
