"Homosexuality is moral perversion and is always wrong," says televangelist Rev. Jerry Falwell.
In a dramatization, a young woman begins quickly rummaging through a bedroom looking for something.
"God hates homosexuality," adds Falwell.
Pat Robertson in a clip from his TV program, "The 700 CLub," announces "Homosexuality is an abomination. The practices of these people is appalling. It is a pathology, it is a sickness."
The young woman then finds what she'd been looking for: a revolver.
Then arch conservative North Carolina Senator Jess Helms says, "A lot of us are sick and tired of all these pretenses of injured innocence. They are not innocent."
The announcer then says, "It is estimated that 30 percent of all teenage suicide victims are gay or lesbian."
Known as Project Open Mind, this planned $1 million paid campaign barely got to see the light of day. PFLAG intended to air it in Atlanta, Houston, Washington DC and Tulsa, Okla. but TV stations received threatening letters from Rev. Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, saying that the "700 Club" clips were being used without permission and if the stations aired the ads, Robertson would sue them.
It aired briefly in Washington DC on Fox affiliate WTTG and local cable. Amazingly, the NBC station KJRH in conservative Tulsa also aired the spot (after 9 p.m., due to its "violence") for one week before it got a second threatening letter and it then ceased airing the ad. The station manager said some viewers misunderstood the ad as well, thinking it actually supported gay-bashing.
Court TV and CNN were approached with the campaign but neither agreed to carry it. CNN flip-flopped about carrying the commercials, agreeing to carry them in late night hours and then backing out altogether.
After such trouble, PFLAG published print advertisements in USA Today, The Houston Chronicle and The Atlanta Constitution, emphasizing cable and local station refusals to carry the campaign. PFLAG even ran into problems with the print ad in the Tulsa World newspaper, which had a policy that prohibited the words "gay, lesbian, homosexual or bisexual" in advertising.
Instead of legally challenging Robertson, CNN and the rest, PFLAG decided to go back and create a new campaign with less difficulty.
