In 2011, Chaz Bono made television history when he signed on to compete on “Dancing With the Stars,” becoming the first-ever openly transgender person to participate in the series. As one might expect, Bono’s presence on the show unfortunately didn’t go over well in the more bigoted corners of the internet.
In fact, there were calls for a boycott from the seemingly perpetually outraged conservative group One Million Moms (which apparently consists of just one mom), known for protesting Burger King for using the word “damn” in a TV commercial, complaining that JLo and Shakira were apparently too sexy during their Super Bowl halftime performance, and boycotting the Hallmark Channel for including gay characters in its movies. Meanwhile, Dr. Keith Ablow wrote a bombastic piece for Fox News that scurrilously warned parents to not let their kids watch “DWTS,” lest they suddenly find themselves overcome with the urge to swap genders.
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Bono himself, however, took it all in stride, insisting viewers would see him doing the foxtrot and the pasodoble, not proselytizing. “I’m going to be dancing, I’m not up on there talking about anything other than dancing,” he told “Good Morning America.” Bono also dismissed Ablow’s notion that watching him would somehow be harmful to children. “All these ideas that children shouldn’t watch me, I’m going to be confusing, all this stuff, it’s crazy,” he said, adding, “… People who don’t have gender dysphoria aren’t going to catch it by watching me dance on television.”
