CMI On TV -- 'New Normal' Season Finale: Divorce Good for Kids; Priest does Gay Marriage
It’s no secret that NBC’s “The New Normal” has made it a point throughout its first year on the air to bash the dysfunction of the traditional family unit, mock Christianity, and push a pro-gay agenda so that it comes across as a perfectly acceptable, functional lifestyle.
The season finale is just the icing on the cake.
First, it runs against both common sense and sociology by suggesting that it’s better off for kids when their parents divorce – even when their parents are still in love!
As the episode opens, Clay Clemmons asks Goldie, his ex-wife, to remarry him. Goldie hesitates, and like any mother naturally would before making a major life decision, she talks to her daughter Shania about it.
But does Shania long to have her daddy back? Contrary to the experience of the vast majority of children with divorced parents, no. She doesn’t want her mother to remarry her father. After all, they’ve had such a great life since they ditched him and moved from Ohio to California, and she doesn’t want to lose it. Her mother still loves her ex-husband, but the real heroes of the day are David and Bryan, a gay couple living in a committed partnership, who have since come into their lives to fill any sort of void that might have been left by a father figure.
Speaking of David and Bryan, in another poignant moment of the finale, a priest refuses to marry them. When they ask why, he explains that he’s all for nontraditional marriage and wishes them all the best, but he is beholden to a rather uptight group of people.
“I work a very traditional job,” he says apologetically, “With very traditional rules.”
In other words, you know, performing a gay marriage isn’t good for business. It would turn off all those pesky traditional people – those devout religious folks who are stuck in the past and too conservative to handle the new normal (but nonetheless fill the coffers week after week). Clearly, in the opinion of this priest, they’re even holding the clergy back from progressing with the rest of society.
At the end of the episode, the priest “repents” of being beholden to traditionalists and ends up performing the wedding anyways, though admittedly in a “half-assed” manner, as he neglected to wear his collar. The point is clear, however. He made a principled stand against the traditions of his faith for the sake of gay marriage, and in the end, he has no regrets.
“Well, no lightning bolts,” he says right after he marries them, “What do you know?”
No lightning from heaven? Obviously it must be okay!
