Well before the 2004–2005 season, there was informed speculation that one of The Simpsons characters would come out of the closet and reveal a homosexual orientation. Widespread conjecture—and no small amount of betting—ranged from candidates such as Waylon Smithers, sycophantic assistant to Mr. Burns, to Homer’s colleagues at the nuclear power plant, Carl and Lenny (although at least one is or was apparently married to a woman). But it was not until a few weeks before the episode aired, in February 2005, that it became clear the show would focus on a gay wedding.
At the beginning of the episode, Bart and one of his friends manage to provoke a downtown depression—complete with boarded-up storefronts—by mistreating a visiting television correspondent. Desperate to revive tourism, Mayor Quimby calls a town meeting, opening the floor to “all crazy ideas that come to people’s minds.” Lisa raises her hand and suggests legalizing same-sex marriages, which would simultaneously attract a growing segment of the marriage market and “strike a blow for civil rights.” In the real world, cities such as Fort Lauderdale have recognized the economic potential of gay tourism. During the annual Gay Days in Orlando in 2006, the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention and Visitors Bureau rented a billboard, urging visitors to visit their city. “We rolled out what we call the rainbow carpet a couple of years ago, and we’ve had a lot of green success,” Nicki Grossman, president of the organization, told Beth Kassab of the Orlando Sentinel. Springfield residents recognize the logic. Instead of objections and prejudice, the idea is equally popular among the townsfolk, with even Moe the bartender recognizing the lucrative possibilities for overpriced, exotic drinks. The mayor agrees they should legalize “gay money—I mean gay marriage,” and the proposal passes by acclamation.
A national television advertising campaign is launched, featuring gay couples walking on the beach at sunset, skipping, and kissing. Even Chief Wiggum, in his police uniform, appears in the commercial, embracing a couple. A rainbow banner welcoming gays is stretched across Main Street, where cars from out of town are bumper to bumper. The couples get out of their cars and march en masse to the logical place for a wedding—Springfield Community Church. There the good feeling and the hustle end. Reverend Lovejoy is frantically nailing a large board across the front door, but he tries to put the best face on his actions. “While I have no opinion for or against your sinful lifestyles,” he tells them, “I cannot marry two people of the same sex. . . . Now go back to working behind the scenes in every facet of entertainment.” (This is a less categorical view than that of the leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention and the Assemblies of God, two denominations that urged a boycott of the Walt Disney Company in the late 1990s when the entertainment giant offered health benefits for partners in same-sex relationships.) As the disappointed visitors begin to scatter, Marge steps out of the crowd. Reverend, she says, “as long as two people love each other, I don’t think God cares whether they have the same hoo-hoo or ha-ha.” Lovejoy, his arms crossed, is unmoved. The Bible forbids same-sex relations, he says. Which book? she asks. Lovejoy doesn’t know—the correct answer, some would say, is Leviticus—and he just repeats, “The Bible.” Marge, the true believer, attempts to argue that scriptural scholars disagree on that point, but the minister rings the church bell to drown her out.
Mayor Quimby declares Lovejoy an idiot, not for his intolerance and closed-mindedness, but because he is passing up such an opportunity, in this case, weddings at two hundred dollars apiece. Here again, a serious point is being made. In city after city— including Orlando—decaying downtown areas and neighborhoods have been revived and gentrified after gays have moved into the areas. They often comprise upscale, two-income households, many without children, and rebuild homes and start businesses. The Springfield mayor’s point attracts Homer’s attention. Previously, he had been holding a sign outside the church reading, “Death before Gay Marriage.” Now he sees the light; if Lovejoy won’t conduct the weddings, someone else could. “I gotta get in on this. These people have rights,” Homer says, as he tosses the placard into the trash can and speeds home to his computer. He soon finds the Web site for the “ePiscopal Church Internet Divinity School,” an online diploma mill. “Now begins the long and spiritual journey to becoming an ordained minister,” Homer says, and within seconds a clerical collar is coming off the printer. He cleans out the garage, transforming it into the “Li’l Chapel,” which he advertises all over town with fliers.
Homer strikes gold. Couples are lined up around the block. Lisa, Bart, and even baby Maggie have been drafted to help with the weddings, as their father rakes in the money, marrying Adam and Steve and Madam and Eve and every gay couple in town. He says he loves love, but what he really loves is money. A sign goes up, advertising “The Church of Matri-Money,” and his willingness to “marry anything to anything else. Diaper fee for chimp brides.” This should sound familiar to those following the ongoing debate over gay marriage. As local TV anchorman Kent Brockman puts it on the news show Smartline, “Have we started down a slippery slope where marriage becomes so meaningless that anyone could marry anything?” In the real world, other demagogic opponents, including some Republican members of Congress, charge that gay marriage will lead to legalizing polygamy (which was permitted in the Bible; the patriarch Jacob married two sisters) and even bestiality. Homer has illustrated this disingenuous argument by marrying two of Springfield’s resident yokels, Cletus and Brandine Delroy, whom he believes to be brother and sister. Homer debates the issue with Lovejoy on Smartline and seems to hold his own. Watching the show later at home with the family, Marge says she’s proud of her husband. “You stood up for people’s right to express love in its most perfect form: a binding legal contract.” On this note of principle and good feeling, the doorbell rings.
It is Patty Bouvier, Marge’s gravel-voiced sister. In the past, she and her other sister, Selma, have never disguised their loathing for Homer. Both sisters are single, and Marge is ecstatic to hear the news that Patty is going to be married and that she wants Homer to perform the ceremony. When Marge asks who the lucky man is, Patty replies, “Veronica.” Perplexed, Patty explains as clearly as she can: “I’m marrying a woman. I’m, I’m gay.” Seeing that her sister is taken aback by the declaration, Patty asks if Marge is disappointed. No, Marge replies, she is just surprised. But after her outspoken support for gay marriage—in the abstract—Marge is shaken. Patty marvels that her sister did not recognize the signs earlier. “You could see it from space,” she says, asking again if Marge has a problem with it. Not at all, Marge says. Since she loves her sister and she loves gay marriage, she would be a super-hypocrite if she didn’t love her sister’s gay marriage.
To demonstrate that approval, the Simpsons dress up for a dinner at home for the couple. But like many parents placed in a similar situation, Marge is uncomfortable and to some degree evasive in explaining the party and guests to her children. Patty and her fiancée arrive, and Veronica is introduced as a professional golfer. No surprise there, Marge says, endorsing another stereotype. But when the couple kisses on the sofa, Marge instinctively covers baby Maggie’s eyes. Asked one more time by her sister if she is okay with the situation, Marge comes unhinged, slipping into the notion that gay marriage represents a thread that leads inevitably to the unraveling of society. “Everyone should do whatever they want,” she babbles. “Take a bear to church, read a book with your feet.” This snaps it for Patty. “You get all liberal, but you can’t handle it when your sister finds love in her own locker room. . . . Marge, if you can find it in your heart to accept me for who I am, I would love to see you at the ceremony.”
Days later, the wedding is about to begin in Homer’s garage chapel. Grampa Simpson is en route, until he learns there will be a cash bar, which prompts him to denounce the ceremony as “against nature.” Upstairs, preparations are underway. In one room, the bride is being dressed by her twin sister, Selma, who has been married and divorced many times. Homer is donning clerical attire and praying: “Oh Lord, please help me say the right words as I consecrate another gay union that angers you so. Please let thy Holy Spirit open the heart of my wife.” Not much luck there. Marge rationalizes her opposition by framing it as a matter of honesty: Patty hid her orientation until her wedding and now expects complete acceptance. Looking in the mirror, Homer gets carried away by his new power, imagining the possibility of marrying himself and somehow reproducing. Heading for the bathroom, Marge accidentally walks in on Veronica, who is standing in front of the toilet—with the seat up! She looks again and sees him, in a wedding dress, shaving his face while singing the Aerosmith song “Dude Looks Like a Lady.” Marge laughs behind her hand and walks away singing the Wedding March.
Patty is delighted to see Marge arrive at the ceremony, giving her a thumbs-up sign as she takes her seat. Homer begins the proceedings with the words “Queerly beloved . . .” Patty’s vow speaks of finding a soul mate who is truthful, honest, and hides nothing. Homer calls for objections, and Marge speaks up, enraging her sister. But Patty is stunned when Marge exposes Veronica as a man. He confesses that he pretended to be a woman to get on the LPGA tour and that he didn’t reveal himself because he didn’t want to lose her. Dropping to one knee, he asks her to marry him as a man. Patty rejects his second proposal: “Hell no, I like girls.” The crowd in the chapel applauds, and Patty thanks Marge for at last accepting her for who she is. Marge says she has learned a lesson: “Just because you’re a lesbian doesn’t make you any less of a ‘be-in,’” that is, a human being. They embrace, and Patty walks off into the sunset with her sister Selma. As they do, Homer greets the line of other couples waiting to be married: the Sea Captain and a ship’s wooden figurehead, the Comic Book Guy and a cutout of the TV horror show host Elvira, and little, slow-witted Ralph Wiggum, with a live tiger.
By the end of the episode, which drew 10.5 million viewers, it was difficult to say what side of the issue The Simpsons writers were on—which was not unintentional. Both sides of the controversy had their say, voiced by various Simpsons characters, but there never was a gay marriage of anyone in the regular cast. “Gay people came out very much in favor of it and were very happy with the episode,” writer-producer Mike Reiss told the Australian magazine Encore in August 2005. “But arch conservatives and right-wing Christians loved the episode, too, because they seemed to think we were making fun of gay people. We really had it both ways.” The episode is one of the best examples of what the show’s writers call a “take-back gag,” in which a point is made with one joke and then immediately undercut by another that follows, or some transparently hypocritical act. In “Something about Marrying,” the whole episode came off as a take-back gag. Even before it aired, the series show-runner Al Jean promised, “We’ll offend you whether you’re gay or straight.”
Still, when Fox first announced that an episode of The Simpsons would deal with gay marriage, it stoked a debate that few issues and few television shows could. As author of the first edition of this book, I was interviewed on ABC’s World News Tonight, CNN, and BBC radio, among others, before the episode aired. The Advocate, the national gay and lesbian newsmagazine, called it a “milestone.” Robert Castillo, a gay activist with Equal Marriage Now, told the Chicago Tribune on February 21, 2005, that he thought it was “cool [that] the imaginary Springfield is tackling same-sex weddings.” Another activist, Rick Garcia, of Equality Illinois, told the paper the show would have a positive impact on society: “It’s just a cartoon, but it’s an icon, and it does shape our attitudes as well as reflect our attitudes.”
Marty Kaplan, associate dean of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School of Communication, told Sharon Waxman of the New York Times, “It’s saying to those who demonize homosexuality, or what they call the homosexual agenda, anything from ‘Lighten up’ to ‘Get out of town.’” Kaplan, also the host of a media show on the talk radio network Air America, told the Times there was a larger message: “It sounds as though they’re saying that what the religious right calls ‘the homosexualist agenda,’ as if it were creeping Satanism, is: These people are your neighbors in the Springfield that is America.”
Conservatives were not so sure. Peter LaBarbera, head of the Illinois Family Institute, told the Tribune he wasn’t that upset about the episode. “Every TV show has to have the ‘gay episode,’” he said. “I just think the ‘all-gay-all-the-time’ is generally wearing on people.” L. Brent Bozell III, president of the Parents Television Council, was more put out. Without screening the episode, he told the Times that “at a time when the public mood is overwhelmingly against gay marriage, any show that promotes gay marriage is deliberately bucking the public mood.” Despite the parental advisory that preceded the show, Bozell said he would have preferred that The Simpsons not tackle gay marriage. “You’ve got a show watched by millions of children. Do children need to have gay marriage thrust in their faces as an issue? Why can’t we just entertain them?”
The show’s advisory cautioned, “This episode contains discussions of same-sex marriage. Parental discretion is advised.” By no stretch of interpretation was the show an endorsement of gay marriage, nor was it a condemnation of the same. Instead, it was a plea for human understanding—the standard Simpsons line—and it probably concluded in the same muddled middle where most Americans are on the issue.