Is Fox News Softening It's Anti-Gay Rhetoric?

Fox News - or Faux News as I call it - is the far right's preferred noise machine and propaganda organ.   But lately, in what can only be viewed as heresy by the Christofascists, Fox News seems to be losing its unanimous anti-gay voice.  BuzzFeed looks at the trend and conjectures that the motivation behind the softening of the anti-gay stridency comes down to money.  If it alienates younger viewers, over a period of time Fox News will be committing financial suicide.  And as noted in an earlier post, anti-gay rhetoric is increasingly less popular with even younger Republicans.  Tony Perkins and Maggie Gallagher must fell as if someone has peed in their Cheerios.  Here are excerpts from BuzzFeed's coverage (the image above is from that article):

Fractures in conservative opposition to gay rights and even same-sex marriage have now widened to include the core of the right’s message machine, the Fox News Channel, where a cadre of younger voices have begun to defend same-sex relationships and even advocate openly for same-sex marriage.

The channel’s heterodox posture on gay rights comes despite Fox’s siding comfortably with mainstream Republican positions on other divisive social issues of the day, such as abortion and contraception. 

But like the Republican Party, whose leaders have begun to step away from anti-gay positions that are deeply unpopular with younger voters, Fox appears to be feeling pressure both from its younger staff and key audience segments to reflect what polls suggest is a rapidly shifting consensus. And over the past year, Shepard Smith, the host of afternoon news show Studio B, has emerged as a vocal champion of same-sex marriage.

“In television people are worried about the demo,” said Margaret Hoover, a former Fox News contributor and former Bush administration staffer who left the network last year, referring to television advertisers preoccupation with viewers between 18 and 49. “‘Are you getting the demo?’ And the demo supports gay rights.”   Smith’s May marriage remarks provided a shock both to elements of Fox’s conservative audience and to liberals, whose enmity with Fox has only deepend through the Obama years.

Smith hasn’t stopped since then — quipping recently that “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” was “the national day of intolerance.” And he’s been joined by Megyn Kelly, while other voices on the network — John Stossel, Andrew Napolitano — have shied away from conservative dogma on gay marriage. 

Whether Fox’s on-air talent is going rogue or the mandate is coming from on high, some of the network’s most prominent names have started to speak louder and more favorably in support of a cherished liberal cause — winning grudging praise from the left and outrage from the right.

Fox is tracing, and perhaps at times leading, a broad and at times disconcertingly fast shift inside Republican politics. Some of the party’s most important donors, organized in part by out former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, now double as donors to marriage equality campaigns.   .   .   .   .    And Republicans are shying away from making gay marriage a campaign issue this year, Politico noted recently, as polling shows that the country is moving towards broader support of the issue.

[Megyn] Kelly joined Smith on his side of the gay marriage debate while interviewing Dr. Robert Jeffress: 

"This country has a long history of discrimination against certain groups. Eventually we wind up getting it right. Right? Against women, against blacks, the civil rights movement and so on. And in justifying that discrimination when it was in place, some folks turn to the Bible and turn to their religious beliefs and said we have to have slavery because it’s in the Bible. Women have to be second-class citizens because that’s in the Bible. Blacks and whites can’t get married because that’s in the Bible. That wound up in a case. A judge wrote that in an opinion, which the Supreme Court ultimately struck that down, saying that’s not right, judge—the Equal Protection clause says you can't do that. Why is gay marriage any different?" she asked.

   

The shift at Fox has also started to ruffle some conservative feathers. The Media Research Center, through its website NewsBusters, expressed its displeasure by clipping the Chaz Bono clip and Smith’s Chick-Fil-A comment and slamming both of them.

I hope those feathers continue to be ruffled big time.  And despite the seeming shift, I won't be tuning into Fox News anytime soon.  Drinking Kool-Aid isn't one of my favored activities.