The Learning Channel, now known primarily as TLC, is an American basic cable network launched in 1972 as a documentary and instructional network. Originally founded by
the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA (Brooks and Marsh 2007:778), it was initially largely educational until its private acquisition in 1980; it took on the name Appalachian Community Service Network before quickly being renamed The Learning Channel. It was again acquired in 1991 by the Discovery Channel, at which point programming broadened to include both children’s and adult programming related to “people and the human experience as opposed to history or the world of nature” (2007:778). By 2001, shows such as Trading Spaces, a show where neighbors have 48 hours to redecorate a room in the other family’s home on a small budget with the help of a designer, became so popular that other shows aimed at entertainment began airing on the channel. In the mid-2000s, the name The Learning Channel was downplayed in favor of using the initials TLC as the channel’s principle moniker, which remains to this day.
Although initially based on educational television of an instructional and documentary nature, more recent programming has expanded greatly into the realm of reality-based television, featuring popular yet controversial shows such as 19 and Counting, which documented a large and growing Arkansas family, with the show title changing each season based on the number of children they had. Other reality programming that has been widely viewed and discussed includes Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a show about a child beauty pageant star from rural Georgia and her family, itself a spinoff of the child beauty pageant show Toddlers and Tiaras; and Sister Wives, following the lives of a Mormon man and his five wives; and others. Recent years have seen scandalous reports emerging from some of the shock-value programming common in TLC’s contemporary lineup, including 19 and Counting, in which one of the oldest brothers, an outspoken conservative Christian, was found to have sexually molested some of his younger siblings, forcing the cancellation of the show
in late 2015. Social commentary about TLC, discussed in more detail later in the chapter, frequently chastises the channel for providing predominantly sensational programming.
3.1.1. My Husband’s Not Gay (2015)
The TLC special that is the focus of the analysis in this chapter is no different from other TLC shows in the controversy it created and the strong reactions it drew. Beginning in late 2014, a controversy arose surrounding the soon-to-be released TLC television special My Husband’s Not Gay, a documentary-style episode of the TLC Presents series, which consists of a series of shock-value one-time specials including titles such as Buying Naked: Nudists Fetch a Home and Santa Sent Me to the ER. My Husband’s Not Gay, which aired on 11 January, 2015, follows four Mormon men in Salt Lake City as they explain what they refer to as Same-Sex Attraction, or SSA. Each of these men, three of whom are married to women, identifies as straight and describes the distinction between being gay, which the Mormon church forbids, and experiencing SSA, which they characterize as merely an attraction toward other men that they actively choose not to act upon. The show tracks their experiences of acknowledging their attractions to themselves, their wives, and their friends as they go about their lives, with frequent reality-style interviews with the men, their wives, and a producer, as well as scenes filmed in their homes and in public locations around town including restaurants, parks, and retail locations.
Due to its perceived controversial subject matter, My Husband’s Not Gay garnered considerable public attention, including a wide array of media coverage from a variety of outlets. This included both news coverage of the show itself as well as op-eds and opinion pieces about the subject matter it covered, and both the creation of and reactions to a petition
calling for the show’s cancellation, organized by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). GLAAD reacted strongly to the special, insisting that it was a step back from the progress made in spreading a “born this way” approach to gay sexualities, an approach of strategic essentialism arguing that gay and lesbian individuals are born with their sexuality, have no control over who they truly are, and should therefore be accepted in society and given equal rights as a result. They also made a strong claim that the episode was dangerous to LGBT youth by equating the premise of the show to reparative therapy, a scientifically unsound program advocated by some religious groups that is designed to remove same-sex feelings and guide those with such attractions to a heterosexual life (Peebles 2005). As part of this coordinated effort, GLAAD president Sarah Kate Ellis was quoted as saying, “No one can change who they love, and more importantly, no one should have to. By investing in this dangerous programming, TLC is putting countless young LGBT people in harm’s way” (Whitehurst 2015; Bolles 2016).
Even the title of the show itself, My Husband’s Not Gay, came under fire for its focus on marriage at a time when same-sex marriage had not yet been legalized nationwide, and for its perceived shock value, which a title such as “I’m not gay” would not have received. This led to critiques in media mentioned above, and even gained the attention of prominent actor and social media guru George Takei, who worked with a group of friends and colleagues to put together a short spoof on the special called My Husband’s Not Straight that was published through social media platforms and made available on YouTube, with over 160,000 views to date.2 The short film features scenes of “same-sex married couples” where one of the men is
“Do I like women? Yeah, but I like pizza too. Do I need pizza? No. No, I can live without pizza if it means I can have this life,” while the other half of the couple shows obvious strong affection. Seen as a hilarious spoof by members of the LGBT community (Wong 2015), it was framed as a way to highlight what they perceived as the absurdity of being in a marriage with a woman while being publicly seen as gay despite the title of the show.
With these reactions in mind, this chapter analyzes footage of My Husband’s Not Gay, as well as media coverage and comment threads pertaining to the show, to investigate public and popular perceptions of the phenomenon of straight-identified men seeking or desiring other men. In doing so, I explore ways that these men’s agency is constructed, constrained, and limited through language practices both in identity construction and in the popular ideologies revealed in discussions of this episode. The chapter aims to contribute to the theorization of constrained agency by examining social, institutional, and individual constraints on agency seen in the use of linguistic constructions of identity and reactions to ideologies about sexual identity by SSA-identified individuals and their families, as well as media representations of men interested in men more broadly and the reactions to such media coverage. The analysis below focuses specifically on the ideological foundation for constraints on agency that such men encounter in their attempts to linguistically construct identities distinct from heterosexual, gay, or bisexual, while maintaining desires often seen as incompatible with these identities.