Testing American's Tolerance

ABC News tested America's openmindness on the show "What Would You Do?". The concept of this episode was to stage a gay couple in a sports bar and see how others in the bar reacted. They also staged a straight couple that acted the same exact way as the gay couple did at the opposite end of the bar. Finally they added a staged observer who acted as though he was extremely disturbed by the gay couple, to see if others in the bar agreed with him or went against him. In the first experiment the couple is not very affectionate at all, and when the actor stands up and protests against them being there, he literally gets told to leave the bar by others sitting at the bar and no one agrees with the harsh comments hes saying. Next they have the actor use comedy as a way to protest against the gay couple and still, no one agrees with him and pretty much tells him to shut up. They then told the gay couple to be more affectionate and see if that changed people's reaction. They also told the straight couple to act as though they were disturbed by the gay couple to see if people went along with it. When the couple got more affectionate, one man seemed to go along with the straight couple and make comments about how disgusting that was, but when the actor got up and actually said something loudly enough for others to hear about it the man did not speak up with him. Also when the cameras came back and interviewed the man he said that he had no problem with it, completey contradicting the comments that he made previously about how disgusting it was. I think the fact that this aired on ABC is a great step for tolerance of gay and lesbian relationships in society. This show proved a couple different things about the way that society works. First of all it proved that many people voice their homophobic opinons in private, but will not express them to everyone because being seeing as homophobic in America today is a negative characteristic. The one man that voiced his supposed homophobia to the entire bar got told to shut up and leave the bar. The other man who obvioulsy had homophobic beliefs said nothing about them when the cameras were on. This leads to a deeper point that this show proved, which is the shift in how homophobia is viewed. Thirty years ago it was the obvious choice to be homophobic, and these relationships were never accepted. Now its a negative thing to have homophobic beliefs, or at least to offend other people by them. This shows the great improvement in the way that society accepts other people, wether they agree with their ways or not. Those people that sat in the bar and argued with the actor who made harsh comments may not have believed being gay was the right thing to do, but they did believe that they should be able to do what they want as long as they didnt get too affectionate. Thats a fine line that seems to be created for gay and lesbian couples but a line thats dwindling every day. I think this show is also positive because it shows people with homophobic beliefs, that although they may not agree with it they can still let people do what they chose to do as long as their not hurting anyone. Altogether homophobia will always be an issue, mostly because of religion but I think this episode showed much improvement in the acceptance of gay couples in society.