Gay Marriage Skit Offers Evidence "Homophobic" South Not So Bad?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart recently had a segment in which they sent two men posing as a gay couple to Mississippi and Alabama to see what the public's reaction would be.

A man in the foreground congratulations
two other men posing as a gay couple in
the Deep South  

The two states are regarded as the least likely to allow or even consider gay marriage anytime soon.

The stereotype is the states are populated by hopeless, right wing, evangelical, closed minded homophobes.

Yee-hah! Let the party begin with this skit.

Maybe some of the politicians in the Deep South are like that, but the Daily Show segment offers anecdotal evidence and hope the general public might be more accepting

The "gay" couple was sent to a carnival, a livestock show and a photo booth where they did the whole PDA thing. Nobody flinched and some passersby were nice to them.

Then,  the pair went to the iconic southern cliche restaurant Waffle House where one proposed to the other.

In each place, people either ignored them or gave them a round of applause.

The Daily Show skit played on southern stereotypes. The people in Alabama and Mississippi didn't.  At least the onces on the Daily Show.

I have no illusions.  Some of the people in the Jon Stewart skit maybe didn't like gay people, but they kept quiet to be polite.

And there are hateful people everywhere who at best detest gay people and at worst want to kill them.

Just ask the morons who physically attacked a straight guy in Omaha for the Cardinal Sin of defending another guy in drag.  Or the 30 or so people murdered each year in the United States in homophobic hate crimes.

Or the zillions of people who can still be fired or denied housing because they are gay.

But the anti-gay politicians and the right wing blowhards who are the loudest are just trying to scare up votes and money. They're Internet trolls without actually being on the Internet.

I'm beginning to thinnk most people might be pretty decent. So thanks to the Jon Stewart people for pointing that out.

Anyway, here's the Jon Stewart video::