Two-Bite Interview: Jim Smith, gay parent runner-up from Without Prejudice

We've written a few times about the rather fascinating new game show Without Prejudice, which pits a group of strangers with cash to give out against another group of strangers about whom they know very little. The panel of judges learns about the mystery folks bit by bit, and in the process has to eliminate potential winners until they decide on who gets the money. The over-arching question is, of course, "What prejudices do people harbor that would prevent them from giving the money to any given contestant?"

Recently the runner-up on one of the episodes was Jim Smith, a gay man who is both married (to a man) and a parent. The episode itself is pretty fascinating from a gay-visibility perspective (here is a highlights reel of the panel's discussions of Jim) and brings to light some downright horrifying beliefs about gay men (one contestant is adamant that most, if not all, gay men were raped between the ages or two and four, which made them gay).

We had the opportunity to ask Smith a few questions about his experience.

AfterElton.com: Without Prejudice seeks to parse out the thought processes behind how we judge others. First and foremost, do you think the show is valid? Do you feel that it's working in the name of progress?
Jim Smith: This is a great show that gives mainstream audiences exposure to people who are different, but it’s not like the “Jerry Springer” portrayals of our community. The contestants are all great people, and you discover that along with the panel as they dig beneath the surface. I mean, I’m boring. My hair isn’t pink and I don’t talk with a lisp. I would never get on Fox. But I did well on the show because the game takes the time to overcome stereotypes and first impressions, and brings out the best in people instead. That’s progress.

AE: Were you coached not to reveal your sexuality until a certain point in the interview, or was the information saved for later in the game through editing?
JS: Everything on the show was pre-taped, so I didn’t have any control over when they outed me. Everybody on the show had a ‘thing.’ Some people wore it on their sleeve through their race or gender, others, like me, weren’t ‘outed’ until later. The producers never encouraged or discouraged me to ‘come out,’ they kept telling me to be honest and truthful all the time about myself and my sexuality. If you want to do well on a game show, listen to the instructions and do exactly what they say, so that’s what I did.

AE: On the show, a group of strangers are essentially picked apart by a panel of "everyman" judges. Did you feel the panel was a reasonable cross-section of today's American culture?
JS: The panel was not nor was it intended to be a cross-section of our culture. It had five people with extremely biased viewpoints. I think most people in this country just want to be left alone to do what they want to do, and are content to let others do their thing in peace. These people were, for the most part, bothered by the mere existence of people who are different, whether they are gay, black or just plain bigoted.

AE: Were you at all surprised to hear some of the more uninformed views on homosexuality (namely, that we were all apparently raped as children)?
JS: I wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, knowing how they cast the panel, I was prepared for worse. I decided early on that I wanted to treat those people with all the dignity and respect that I could, because only by meeting people like me are they ever going to learn the truth. It is annoying to have to argue the ‘nature vs. nurture’ thing over and over, but it is really easy when you’re standing up there to say “I’m gay, and I wasn’t raped” and completely rock their world.

AE: The gay man on the panel seemed to have a pretty challenging job making his point to the other judges, some of whom had alarmingly skewed views of gay people. How do you think you would have fared if you had been on the other side of the table, involved in the discussion?
JS: He did a wonderful job, bless his heart, challenging the panel’s statements with tact, facts and humor. I’m not that outgoing, and I don’t have that much patience with intolerant bigots. It was a real struggle for me in the five minutes I had in front of the panel. I couldn’t imagine trying to do that for one minute longer.

AE: Did you have any contact with the gay judge after the show? It seems after watching that you almost had a sort of shared experience on the show.
JS: They did a pretty good job of keeping us separated before, during and after. I would love to give him an ‘atta-boy’ but I think he knows he did a great job.

AE: You note that you would likely have donated most of the money, had you won, to a gay marriage equality cause. It's hard to tell from the reactions, but one might guess that your words might have vindicated the anti-gay judges in not choosing you.
JS: Yeah, I could have said that I would use the money for medical bills from the birth of twins, which would have been more sympathetic, but they had already decided that I didn’t need the money. I wanted one last chance to demonstrate how important marriage equality was to my family.

It would be great if our society could take all that money, plus what the opponents of equality are going to spend on their campaigns, and spend it on doing good things instead of keeping people like us out of marriage.

AE: You may not have won the money to donate to gay rights causes, but do you consider your presence on the show as a sort of advocacy in its own right?
JS: My goal was just to get past the first round so they would get to hear my story. If they wound up kicking me out just because I was gay, it would have been shame on them, because it would be so obvious they couldn’t overcome their prejudices.

I obviously made progress because I got positive votes from the two most anti-gay judges at one point or another, and in the end, I don’t think I lost because I was gay. Naya played an outstanding game, and from talking to her backstage, even I wanted her to win. I loved that she managed to insinuate that I would use the money to buy a pony for the kids.

One thing that happened backstage really rocked me. The producers had to read the transcripts of the contestants’ taped performances out loud to us. Heath, the contestant from Oklahoma, answered the “should gay couples adopt children” question in rather ugly terms. When we were sitting around waiting for the eliminations, he went out of his way to apologize to me, saying something like “I never met no gay like you and I ain’t never thought about it before. It makes sense now. I hope you weren’t upset by what I said.” If I can have that kind of impact just by being visible, well, here I am!

AE: Have you received much response to the show since it aired? How has your family dealt with the response?
JS: Everybody who has seen the show is of course proud of me and astonished by the whackos. It wasn’t that long ago that my parents were the whackos, so I know how far they have come and that our society will get there too.

Since the show aired, I started a project to get Governor Schwarzenegger to sign California’s same-sex marriage legislation (AB 43) into law. He knows lots of gay people – he spoke at Merv Griffin’s funeral – and has been a good friend to our community, but his support mysteriously stops at letting us get married. I’ve written a letter to him every day for a little over a month now, with a different message each time. Of course I put them all online and read them out loud on YouTube.

I get about three times the traffic from the YouTube videos than I do from the Web site although I think it’s infinitely more boring. Only one person has made the connection between me and Without Prejudice, but I find myself answering the same ignorant questions that I did on the show. I’m so happy helping the ‘whackos’ rediscover their faith and their families.