30 Days Look at Parenting Falters

Tuesday’s episode of the GLAAD Media Award-winning 30 Days on FX, entitled "Same Sex Parenting," provided an opportunity for Kati, a devoutly Christian mother of two adopted sons, to spend a month living with Tom and Dennis Patrick, an Ann Arbor, Michigan couple lovingly raising four adopted sons of their own.

By the end of the thirty days, we see that Kati genuinely seems to like this family and admits they are great parents, but yet she is not able to reconcile the reality of the situation with her own belief system. Doing so, she says, would compromise a fundamental part of who she is, and the episode ends with her returning home to advocate for laws that prohibit gays and lesbians from adopting.

“What’s fantastic [about this episode] is that everything doesn’t just get wrapped up in a nice little bow,” creator Morgan Spurlock told AfterElton.com. “What I think makes 30 Days so great is it shows how imperfect things are, but at the same time it shows how much further I think we all need to go to continue to achieve some level of tolerance and understanding with one another.”

Viewers saw the joy and love in the Patrick family and were left wondering what it would take to change Kati's mind. How can Kati's belief system be so strong that she would rather let kids languish in the foster care system than be placed in a good, loving home? Perhaps inaccurate statements like those made by the anti-gay Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg contribute to views held by people like Kati. Within the episode, Sprigg rattles off his demonstrably false assertions:

"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."

There is no scientific research that backs Sprigg's claims, yet Spurlock and the show's producers have placed no credible social science expert or child health authority to counter his lies presented as fact. At best, viewers are left to imply that merely seeing the happy Patrick family contradicts Sprigg, which it doesn't. There is no one in place in the episode to tell people like Kati that they are being lied to by those passing themselves off as experts.

GLAAD was unsuccessful in getting FX to either add a reputable expert to the program or remove Sprigg's falsehoods altogether before the program aired. On Monday we issued an Action Alert bringing the problem to the public's attention.

Columnist Dan Savage knows the adoptive parents Tom and Dennis featured, and after viewing the episode, agrees with GLAAD's position:

"Sprigg’s comments come early in the program and linger like mustard gas over every scene that comes after....Basically Spurlock didn’t just talk to Sprigg, and let him lie and lie and lie some more, he brought in someone to second Sprigg [anti-gay activist Dawn Stefanowicz]—someone using right-wing religious code—and allows her to assert that it would be better for Tom and Dennis’s kids if they hadn’t been adopted at all. And, again, the casual viewer is left to conclude that it would probably be for the best if Tom and Dennis hadn’t been able to adopt those boys..."

GoodAsYou.org's Jeremy Hooper had this to say about the show's lack of balance:

"One of the things we find most annoying about this ongoing 'gay vs. anti-gay' kerfuffle is how willing some are to present the situation as a two-sided debate in which both sides hold equal merit, rather than what it truly is: A scenario where one side is trying to live their lives, and the other is trying to prevent other's well-beings by passing off faith-based opinions as fact. We will not get past this needless debate until folks see our opposition's views not as casual opinion towards which we can and should 'agree to disagree,' but rather as bald discrimination that decent society should view with unapologetic disdain. FX: We sincerely hope you'll reconsider your decision to embolden baseless bias."