"South Park": A Milestone in Gay Visibility

The boys leave the tolerance camp as someone else arrives, and Lemmiwinks is at the end of his adventure.

I'm including this episode because it's certainly one of the most controversial and misunderstood episodes of South Park. It's easy to assume, reading the premise and finding out that the show perpetuates a particularly vile urban legend, that it goes too far over the top to work, but I think the show does what it intended to do — show that "tolerance" does have a limit. Everyone is squarely on Mr. Garrison's side, until he starts doing things in class that are inappropriate, and would be no matter what his sexuality was. Now that's treating gay people just like straight people.

Funny rating: 7 (it earns extra points just for the Lemmiwinks song)
Gay rating: 10 Big Gay Als (it doesn't get much gayer)

SEASON 7

Episode #8: "South Park is Gay"

Original air date: 10/22/2003

Synopsis: The town of South Park celebrates the hip new metrosexual craze.

In a nutshell: "When the girls at school see how gay we are, they're going to be all over us."

Stan, Cartman and Kenny have gone metrosexual and want to share their knowledge with Kyle.

Mr. Garrison can't believe that the straight men of the town have stolen the "gay identity."

Mr. Garrison and Kyle travel to New York to confront the Queer Eye guys . . . but they learn that the Fab Five are not what they appear.