Today In TV History: ‘The Simpsons’ Side-Stepped ‘Very Special’ For Its Gay-Themed Episode

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone. 

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: February 16, 1997

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE:  The Simpsons, “Homer’s Phobia” (Season 8, Episode 15). [Watch on Simpsons World.]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: There are about eighteen different impressive things that The Simpsons do with “Homer’s Phobia,” and I’m not even talking about a pun title so subtle that I didn’t get it until literally last week. Among them:

• Bringing camp legend John Waters directly into the mainstream, complete with a rudimentary education on camp so that all your straight uncles now knew what was up with that weird Debbie Boone vinyl album you had propped up on a shelf.
• Acknowledging the Simpson family themselves as participants in camp’s grand legacy (I’m not sure I ever noticed how iconic those bent rabbit-ears on the family TV was before this episode). It’s a subtle but important touch: camp (which in this episode essentially serves as shorthand for gay sensibility) isn’t just something you go and gawk at in that part of town you never go to. It’s right in your living rooms, or perhaps hiding in plain sight, as Marge’s grandmother’s Civil War figurine/secret liquor bottle was.
• Making a Lupe Velez reference and a Helen Lovejoy carpet/curtains joke on FOX in 1997.
• Perfectly skewering Homer’s homophobia from multiple angles. First as incoherent moralizing (it’s not that John’s gay, it’s that he’s a sneak; Homer likes his beer cold, his TV loud, and his homosexuals flaming), then as outright panic (they’re everywhere! even in our steel plants!), and finally as an assault on fragile masculinity, both Homer’s and especially Bart’s. “They’re coming for our sons!” has long been both implicit and explicit in anti-gay arguments, and The Simpsons reveals just how silly — how actually funny — that mindset is.

• By refusing to take the very-special-episode route, The Simpsons didn’t define gay people as a victim class who deserve our tolerance. The show doesn’t spend a whole lot of time defining John at all, frankly, The genius of “Homer’s Phobia” comes in how true it remains to the title. It’s not about making the case for John’s humanity. That’s self-evident. It’s about laying bare every straight argument against gay people as the insecure, nonsensical brayings of a man who doesn’t even know what he’s afraid of.

[You can stream The Simpsons‘ “Homer’s Phobia” on Simpsons World.]