12/04/2024
LGBTQIA+ Groups in the United States have been giving thanks this week for the life of Norman Lear, the television scriptwriter who has passed on at the age of one hundred and one. The Guardian newspaper notes that Mr Lear was the writer and producer of a series of hit shows, including All in the Family, Sanford and Son, Maude and The Jeffersons, that changed the face of American television. At a time of national division, Lear pulled in huge audiences with sitcoms that confronted controversial issues, but used traditional family humour, expanded to black families and single mothers, to illuminate both sides of a conflict, while holding people together. In 1977, he received a Peabody award for “giving us comedy with a social conscience”. An unrepentant liberal, Lear in 1980 founded People for the American Way, an advocacy group aimed at countering the rising power of the evangelical right. He produced I Love Liberty (1982), a rejoinder to conservatives who claimed the left was unpatriotic. In 2001 his purchase of one of the first published copies of the Declaration of Independence led to its exhibition on a national tour; Lear also produced a celebrity reading of it at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. People for the American Way say of their founder "Television producer Norman Lear was moved to create People For the American Way at a time when core American values were being undermined by the emerging religious-right political movement. Its leaders weaponized media platforms with claims that the only “real” Americans were people who shared their religious beliefs and political worldview. Norman, a Jewish American and World War II vet, knew how wrong they were. He recruited people of many faiths and political backgrounds, including the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, to join him in saying, “that’s not the American Way.” They also noted "Norman Lear was a legendary television and film producer behind visionary shows like All in the Family, The Jeffersons, and Good Times. His shows weren’t just popular – they fostered countless conversations about important social issues, including racism, LGBTQ rights, and abortion. His shows broke new ground on representation and inclusion, changing the face of television in part by changing the faces that were on television."
