Family Guy No Family Role Model, Says Activist
by Ed Thomas
August 15, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A Michigan pro-family activist is grieved by what he sees as the trivialization of pornography in the Fox TV animated series Family Guy.During a recent episode of the Sunday evening series, a main character visit's a porn shop and decides to become the author of pornographic novels. Graphic sexual language is used, and rape and violence to women are portrayed as parts of healthy sexual fantasy. Bill Johnson, president of the American Decency Association (ADA), says that is just an example of the immorality and vulgarity that typifies the weekly half-hour program, which carries a TV-14 rating.
Johnson believes the program's harmful effects are ignored by the show's creators -- and allowed into homes by undiscerning parents who think any cartoon is harmless. "You know, you just grieve on so many different levels because you also know that there are many, many families that are watching this that just are so undiscerning, aren't grounded," he laments. "And it's just becoming increasingly acceptable, this sort of so-called 'entertainment.'"
Johnson says such promotion of "sexual propaganda" led his organization to call for a previous boycott of Family Guy-sponsor Yum Brands -- for its refusal to stop advertising on ABC's Desperate Housewives.
"Certainly, [with] their advertising trends, advertising on programs like the War at Home, Family Guy, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy, and so on and so forth, consistently -- this is a company that needs to be boycotted," he says.
According to Johnson, Yum Brands owns Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's, Taco Bell, and KFC. For the sake of families and young people who are being damaged by sexualized television programming -- and to force a change in advertising policy -- the ADA president recommends boycotting of Yum Brands and its subsidiaries.
Ed Thomas, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
