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Lee Daniels Recounts The Rampant Homophobia In Empire’s Test Audience

“I think that, still, there’s a stigma to being gay that we can’t shake — the world can’t shake. It’s something about two men being together — two women being together they can more accept — but two men being together. I’m doing this TV show called Empire and you sit in the room with people as you’re testing the show and you are seeing immediate feedback through a one-way mirror, and they have this knob, where zero is they hate it and 10 is they love it. And they’re at a 10 until the two men kiss, then it’s down to a zero. So at the end the questionnaire asks, “why is it a zero when two men kiss?” And you knew that the 100 people in the room — 95 percent of them heterosexual — didn’t want to admit their homophobia, so they sort of look at the floor. It was like not admitting to being a racist. I think [acceptance] is slowly becoming a think because we are making it a thing. It is the “civil rights” of our time right now, and I think that we have to not back down.”

- Lee Daniels speaking to Daily Extra about test audience 

   reaction to gay content in his show Empire. 

Watch the clip below:

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Lee Daniels (and Shonda Rhimes and others) are doing a powerful public service for not only gay people, but all people. People need to be made to feel uncomfortable... It's just like people were made to feel uncomfortable when blacks demanded the right to sit at the lunch counters next to them during the civil rights struggles of the 1960's.  If you're not made uncomfortable by the things you fear and know nothing about, how can you ever confront your irrational hatred of it... Homophobia is just the same thing, an irrational hatred of something(one) you don't even know.

Moreover, programs like "Empire," "Scandal" and "How To Get Away With Murder" are saving young gay lives by showing all young people that we are part of the human experience... that we live and love and have all the same joys, fears and faults of every other human being.  In short, seeing gay people portrayed in the media of our culture benefits us and everybody else too.

"Fear Eats the Soul"