Wife Swap, February 9

The BBQ Pit
1

Wow. Ignorance. Just pure, unadulterated ignorance.
I don’t have television at home, but on break at work, Wife Swap was on. They usually try to pair opposites - neat freak/ slob, pampered wife/ hard worker, etc. This week a lesbian couple (with a daughter) swapped with a well-to-do Christian family from Texas. An INTERRACIAL Christian family (this is an important detail).

When the couples met, after having lived in each other’s homes for two weeks, the Christian wife (a black woman) claimed she was terrified for her daughter’s (funny how she didn’t mention her sons; apparently pedophilia is based purely on physical atraction to a gender) safety, since a lesbian, a SEXUAL PREDATOR (her words) would be living in her house. Okay, I don’t have kids, but if I actually thought that a real-live sexual predator was coming to my house as part of a television program, I WOULD NOT TAKE PART IN THE PROGRAM!! Holy fuck!!

She then went on to call the lesbian couple ‘weird’, ‘deviants’, ‘icky’ and ‘depraved.’
What kills me is not just the fact that I disagree with her ideology; it’s not just her refusal to see the Bible and Christianity as malleable instruments that can be used to support or undermine a given perspective; it’s her AGGRESSIVELY IGNORANT attitude - she is uninformed, and dammit, she will stay that way!
Less than fifty years ago, people used the Bible and those exact words - deviant, icky, depraved, to describe interracial marriage - it was an abomination against God. And here, this woman - no, she’s not even a woman, she isn’t human - in the face of an emotionally raw crying woman, she made no attempt to comfort her, console her or even tone down her rhetoric which was clearly causing pain - even my CAT will come and head-butt me when I’m crying, fer god’s sake.*
So here is one-half of an interracial marriage, invoking the same message of hatred, bigotry and ignorance that she herself would have been faced with fifty years ago, without a hint of irony.

It’s people like her that just fill with an impotent rage - impotent because she will cling to her ignorance no matter what, and the more she is challenged, the more she just chalks it up to Satan trying to sway her. She is unreachable because she chooses pain and cruelty over basic human kindness.

*Of course this was edited, and I don’t know what was not aired - she might have had some less repugnant moments that I didn’t get to see

2

Nope. Hate-filled, self-righteous twat all the way.

3

I couldn’t believe what a bitch she remained until the very end. It was almost funny how at the begining of the show she went on and on about ‘loving your neighbor’ and yet couldn’t seem to do just that.

I loved Nicki.

4

It’s ok IMO to not agree with the Homosexual life style but the hostility was so over the top, I didn’t get it.
The lesbian lady, Nikki was totally cool, I would have her at my house any time.

5

I just watched it, and boy oh boy was I entertained!
I laughed, I teared, and became exhausted with frustration!

Oh well, at least I still get a kick out of seeing ‘traditionalized’ parents squirm when something new and different comes their way. :stuck_out_tongue:
I wonder if the 3 kids got to keep their cpu’s and t.v.'s?

6

Oh Yeah, eventhough the black woman was off the wall, to her credit she did feel sorry for Nikki the lesbian woman when she was crying because she apologized for being to “direct” with her comments about Nikki and her partner being depraved and all the other things.

7

OK kids.

They call it reality TV.

But its not real.

8

I’m going to go easy on you 'cause you’re a kid. What exactly do you mean by “Homosexual life style” and how exactly do you “agree with” it? Homosexuals exist. Your “agreement” with that fact is irrelevant. You might as well say you don’t “agree” with gravity. The only thing that matters is whether you treat people, gay or not, with respect and basic human decency.

9

I don’t think that’s to her credit. She didn’t feel bad because she realized what she said was wrong and hurtful, just that she said it to the woman’s face, and made herself look bad. She’ll be saying the same things behind her back, but that doesn’t make it better.

She didn’t apologize for the comments themselves, just the fact that she said them to her face and not behind her back.

10

Whether or not it’s OK to agree with homosexuality, it’s the mark of an idiot to call it “the homosexual life style.”

11

Should have been " " around the word “agree.”

Seriously, as Homebrew says, there’s nothing to agree or not agree with. It’s a simple fact of human existence that some people are gay.

And calling it a “life style” implies that it’s some sort of aesthetic or recreational decision, like leather jackets or rock climbing or stamp collecting. It makes as much sense as referring to the “left-handed life style” or the “bald life style.”

12

I agree the Christian woman was a total bitch. She completely ignored that the other household was well-adjusted, the daughter was loved and well cared for, and both women were clearly very dedicated to each other. I can’t imagine describing such a loving household as “depraved.” I was also kind of disappointed that the Christian woman’s husband, who seemed to have become more comfortable with the lesbian lady’s point of view, never stepped in, even though he appeared somewhat uncomfortable with his wife’s comments. Also, I thought that his wife’s constant harping on “excellence” was obnoxious in the extreme. It sounded like she was running a business, not raising children.

Still, it is reality TV. But even though they doubtless played with the film to make it look really bad, I don’t think that you can fake the closed-mindedness and ignorance that bitch displayed.

13

I don’t. Gravity and I had a falling out a while ago.

I’m thinking START meant ‘approve’ instead of ‘agree’. As in it’s okay to be a homosexual as long as one doesn’t act upon those feelings.

14

Apparently she really respects the Bible - after all, it consistently says that homosexuality is wrong, and the way to respond is to shrilly and hysterically scream at people who you view as sinners and tell them how depraved they are and how right you are.

Doesn’t it?

Matthew 7: 1-3 ; Mark 12:31 ; Mark 12:33 ; Romans 13:10; Romans 14:4 ; Romans 14:10 ; James 4:11

Maybe not. You know what, I can understand that some people are uncomfortable with sexuality. That’s fine. However, that doesn’t give you a right to respond this way, any more than I should consider myself morally upright for screaming at this woman – let alone restricting her civil rights – for being, in my view, a hypocrite (look at Mark 10: 17-29 for example).

15

Did you see the part where the black woman was talking about being turned away from lunch counters (or some equivalent) because she was black? That was special. Keep in mind that this woman is, maybe, 40 years old (i.e., too young to remember much of the civil rights movement or to have participated in it) and lives in Arizona (i.e., not the Deep South). She then somehow claimed this discrimination made it OK for her to be prejudiced against homosexuals.

16

Glad I’m not the only one.

Sheesh, it’s a TV Show. They expect, and plan for, some sort of over-the-top conflict and outrageousness - because that’s what people want to see.

Taking it seriously is just a waste of precious brain cells.

17

In that case, he’s still an idiot. I posted about this a while ago in IMHO, and no one responded to me.

What gives START the moral authority to say to an entire segment of the population; “You don’t have the right to love and be loved, to give and get fulfilling sexual pleasure in your lifetime. I guess you’ll just have to consign yourself to a life of celibacy and sleeping alone. You forfeited your right to romantic human companionship because of an accident of birth.”

Who would want to be responsible for telling another human being something so monstrous? Human love is a basic need. Babies die without it as surely as they would die if we stopped feeding them (as has been seen in the studies of orphanages where infant mortality is high because workers don’t have the time/inclination to hold the babies).

18

This isn’t directed at you, kidchameleon but the viewpoint you just described.

I don’t understand how it can be “okay to be a homosexual” and not be able to act on those feelings. It’s either “okay” or it’s not. Not both. It’s like they’re (CRWC (Christian Right-Wing Conservatives)) trying to say, “Hey, look, we’re tolerant and open-minded” when they say it’s “okay”. But they think that homosexual people should take a vow of chastity? That doesn’t make any sense. None of their arguments against gay marriage/relationships make any sense to a thinking person, but they still stand behind the attitude that gays are “sexual deviants”, “ruining marriage”, “choose to be that way”, and are “pedophiles”.

I knew people like her existed, but thank god, I’ve never come across one until I watched this show. Calling that woman a “sexual predator” was the most hateful thing I’ve heard in a long time. It makes it worse that after she said it, she was folding her arms in front of her, looking rather proud of herself.

Don’t CRWC know how hypocritical they are? Love thy neighbor…but not if they’re gay. They have so much hate, I would think that they are the ones “going to hell”. And fuck the handbasket, it’s too good for them.

19

Crap. I didn’t see this when it posted.

I hear this argument a lot. Yes these shows are edited creatively, but they can’t show what you don’t give them. They didn’t string random words together from different conversations and put them in one hateful sentence after another.

20

Funny, I thought he said ‘It’s OK IMO not to agree with the homosexual lifestyle’. I suppose he wrote the above in a Very Small Font Indeed.