Social conservatives are cheering NBC's
decision to close The Playboy Club, one of the most
gay-inclusive shows of the new television season.
“It is great news that the 'Playboy
Club' is canceled after just three episodes. Clearly viewers are not
interested in supporting the brand that normalized pornography and
caused immeasurable harm to women, children and the men who became
addicted to porn,” said Dawn Hawkins, executive director of
Morality in the Media.
Hawkins' group organized a petition
campaign urging NBC to ax the show.
While the site CloseTheClubOnNBC.com
charges that the show glorified the sexual exploitation of women,
other social conservatives balked at the show's gay inclusiveness.
On the show, Bunny Alice (played by
Leah Renee) and her husband Sean (Sean Maher) are in a sham marriage
and both characters are gay. Alice and Sean are also members of the
Chicago chapter of the Mattachine Society, one of America's earliest
gay rights groups.
(Related: Sean
Maher feeling “fantastic” since coming out gay.)
The Playboy Club was set in the
early 1960s and it appeared as though producers were working on a
storyline contrasting the Civil Rights Movement with the budding gay
rights movement.