Nearly 97,000 people have signed a
petition calling on cabler TLC to cancel its upcoming special My
Husband's Not Gay.
The show, set to premiere Sunday,
features four Utah Mormon men who are attracted to men but do not
identify as gay.
My Husband's Not Gay follows
three married couples – Jeff and Tanya, Pret and Megan and Curtis
and Tera – and a bachelor, Tom, who are all devout members of The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints living in Salt Lake City,
Utah.
The program “promotes the false and
dangerous idea that gay people can and should choose to be straight
in order to be part of their faith communities,” wrote the author
of the
Change.org petition, Josh Sanders of Virginia Beach, Virginia.
“It's irresponsible to be airing a
show with the content that gives the idea that sexual orientation is
a choice,” GLAAD President & CEO Sarah Kate Ellis told Good
Morning America. “And that's a discredited and old idea.”
TLC responded in a statement to ABC
News, saying that the men featured in the show “reveal the
decisions they have made, and speak only for themselves.”
The Mormon faith teaches that being gay
is not a sin, but any sex outside a marriage between a man and a
woman is.