An ABC News Primetime undercover
segment on how passersby react to a waitress belittling a gay family
has been labeled “propaganda” by the anti-gay marriage group
National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
In the recently aired segment titled
Gay Parents Bashed, John Quinones secretly videotapes the
reactions of diners in a Texas restaurant when a waitress berates a
gay couple in public.
The people being bashed are actors, but
the diners are real.
“It's bad enough that you're
lesbians, but that they don't have a father I think that's kind of
bad,” the waitress tells a lesbian couple with two children.
“You don't feel uncomfortable?
People watching you?” she asks. “I mean isn't it bad for the
kids?”
Remarkably, more than half of the
diners came to the defense of the gay couple, even when the female
parents were replace with men. Some even become angry.
“What's offensive to the kids is what
you're doing,” says a female patron. “You're disturbing their
family.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)
In a blog entry titled ABC News
Propaganda: People who Think Children Need Moms and Dads are
Intolerant Bigots Who Accost Families in Restaurants, NOM chided
the network.
“The insidious propaganda point from
ABC News is the suggestion that millions of good Americans who
believe marriage means a man and a woman because children ought to
have moms and dads, would or are behaving like this. Shame on ABC.”
“Be prepared for lot more prejudiced
stereotyping of decent and honorable Americans down the road by
powerful elites,” the group ads.