In this week’s installment of Extremely Offensive Articles, we have Christian Newswire’s director stating - for all the world to read - that American Idol is struggling with ratings because Ellen DeGeneres is gay.

According to director Gary McCullough: “I am confident that the producers of American Idol will be shocked when their market share has cratered, and will in all honesty find a dozen other reasons for the drop in ratings. After all, what successful television producer could have a clue what wholesomeness is as long as they see promoting homosexuality as a virtue?”

In the article, McCullough writes “[Ellen] DeGeneres’ ‘Yes, I have loved a woman,’ comment from the May 11th show, was the most obvious lesbian-one-liner, but it wasn’t the only one, and it is hurting the show’s ratings.”

Furious yet? Just wait - it actually gets worse!

“Network television producers may or may not stop promoting homosexuality; but for certain they will learn to keep homosexual activism separate from the cash-cow of family entertainment,” McCullough stated in his article. “Network television has yet to learn what the movie industry has proven with Disney, Pixar, and the like; you cannot ‘pretend’ to produce family oriented entertainment; you actually have to deliver the goods”

I think we’re supposed to infer from Mr. McCullough’s comments that it is somehow inappropriate to mix homosexuality and family entertainment on prime time TV. In rebuttal, we’ve put together a list of homosexual characters and personalities who have been on highly popular television shows:

Glee, unarguably the hottest new show of the year, features a main character (Rachel Berry) who is being raised by two gay dads. While we have not seen the two gay dads, we’ve have more than a dozen references to them through the course of the show - which started with the pilot. Speaking of Glee, actress Jane Lynch (who plays breakout character Sue Sylvester) is a lesbian. And married.

NBC has featured gay characters on shows like My Name is Earl and The Office. This is also the same network which brought us Will & Grace, a highly popular show where homosexuality was a main topic of continuous discussion.

Entourage, a hot HBO hit, also features a gay character. Another successful HBO show, Sex and the City, featured two regularly-recurring homosexual characters, Stanford and Anthony.

ABC’s Spin City and The Drew Carey Show both featured gay characters. ABC’s Roseanne also had homosexual characters way, way before it was popular to do so. We didn’t all forget about Nancy or Roseanne’s infamous lesbian kiss, did we? It’s largely accepted that ABC was the first major network to portray a gay character, which it did with The Corner Bar in 1972. There was also a gay character on the network’s series Barney Miller.

Real-life homosexuals have also competed on reality TV: The Amazing Race, Big Brother, Survivor and The Real World (to name just a handful) have all welcomed gay contestants.

ChristWire, which is not the same thing as Christian Newswire, also believes that homosexuality on TV is the worst possible threat. The following quotes are from a March 7, 2009 post (and ps, a huge quote from the Bible accompanies the article):

“For every one adult homosexual, three to four boys are being sexually molested.”

“Gays will try to seduce your son in various ways, all to make them feel ‘trapped’ in a relationship where they can be exploited.”

“Parents, we must stop the gays in their tracks. In your heart you know the more movies like Brokeback Mountain (which won awards) and gay pride tv shows like Queer Eye for Straight Guys [sic], Ellen and the child aimed Spongebob cartoon (among many others) are allowed to make a gay lifestyle seem ok, the higher the risk of your kid being forcibly sodomized and dieing from AIDS.”

That date again, just in case your mind is spinning in disbelief, was March 7, 2009…not March 7, 1907.