Conservative activists continue to vehemently attack Chaz Bono and ABC over Bono’s upcoming appearance on Dancing With The Stars. Both Bono, a transgender man who has completed female-to-male gender transition surgery, and Carson Kressley, who is openly gay, have been the subject of attacks from Religious Right activists who warn that the two are “LGBT rights advocates and promote this destructive lifestyle.”
Today, Media Research Center president Brent Bozell is out with a column slamming ABC for casting Bono and Kressley. Bozell charges that “the entire transgender propaganda movement is confused”, and says that nothing will ever make “make Bono a real male.” “Nowhere in any of this celebration is the hard reality,” Bozell writes, “Despite ‘his’ low voice, and his sideburns and his awful decision to amputate his own breasts, Bono remains a woman”:
If Chaz Bono were going to perform the entire season as a man, with no reference to “his” actual gender, then ABC wouldn’t be offering that LGBT educational opportunity. It is why no one should have any doubt that Chaz Bono is going to be instructing America about the need to overcome their “transphobia” — on the show and everywhere else.
On ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Sept. 6, the network used the opposition of the American Family Association, AFA, as a foil to promote the show. “It’s made me realize I’m really glad I’m doing this because America really needs to see this,” Bono said. “You know, it just kind of shows why for me it’s important to be on the show, because so little still is known about what it means to be transgender, and there’s so many just completely inaccurate stereotypes and thoughts that people have.”
Four days earlier, ABC put on gay publicist Howard Bragman to call the AFA a “hate group” inspiring “hate opinions on email” that are like “people writing on a bathroom wall.” AFA may as well write on bathroom walls. It’s not getting a lick of airtime on ABC.
This is Bono’s year of media activism, complete with a book last spring called “Transition,” promoted all over the news channels and with a promotional one-hour Oprah Winfrey Network special called “Becoming Chaz,” hailed as the story of a “valiant struggle of a sensitive individual to become who he really is.”
Nowhere in any of this celebration is the hard reality. Despite “his” low voice, and his sideburns and his awful decision to amputate his own breasts, Bono remains a woman. It’s ridiculous for ABC to argue children won’t be confused by this political-correctness crusade. The entire transgender propaganda movement is confused. Indeed, there is a new sexual category to go alongside G, L, B and T –“Q” for questioning.
ABC and the rest of the media universe can do all the pretending they want, but that’s not going to make Bono a real male. It’s not a completely inaccurate stereotype for people to say so. Silly, old-fashioned me; I’m stuck on human beings made as males and females.
