This Is the ‘Family Guy’ Joke That Inspired Over 188,000 FCC Complaints
Family Guy is famous for offending conservative TV-watchers en masse, but this joke was probably most objectionable to the dairy lobby.
If you asked the average Family Guy fan to name which joke they think the series may have taken “too far,” the second most popular answer after “none of them” would probably be one of the usual suspects: the Prom Night Dumpster Baby, the “You Have AIDS” song or any number of digs about any number of religions all stick out as the most memorably offensive moments in Family Guy history, and all of them inspired plenty of outrage and pearl-clutching in their time.
However, there is one oft-overlooked gag from the Family Guy canon that caused the dreaded conservative TV watchdog group Parents Television Council, or PTC (not to be confused with Peter Griffin’s censorship-skewering, parodical TV network PTV), to drum up over 188,000 official complaints to the Federal Communications Commission demanding that Seth MacFarlane and Family Guy answer for their indecency.
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The PTC and its million-plus members made enemies of Family Guy early in the show's run and has publicly filed complaints with the FCC over seven specific Family Guy episodes, but their letter-writing campaign with the biggest turnout came after the premiere of the episode “Family Gay” on March 8, 2009, in which PTC president Tim Winter alleged, “Fox treated viewers to everything from an ‘eleven-way’ gay orgy to baby Stewie eating a bowl of cereal with horse sperm.”
All it’s missing is a “Got Milk?” ad at the break.
In the offending episode, Peter rashly purchases a brain-damaged horse and attempts to turn a profit as a horse breeder and horse racer, only for the stallion to cause carnage in its first race and drive the Griffin family deep into debt over the damages. To recoup the losses, Peter agrees to become a test subject for pharmaceutical development. Naturally, the drug he’s asked to test is an injection designed to turn people gay, hence the episode title.
On top of Winter’s whining about what may or may not have been an extra-protein-packed bowl of Cheerios, the PTC head bemoaned that “the show’s leading character is also shown fanaticizing (sic) about his wife and moaning while a horse licks his bare behind. Clearly, the explicit content was not isolated to one instance in one segment of the show; it permeated the entire program.”
Despite the PTC’s success in convincing 188,000 incensed prudes to file indecency complaints with the FCC, the federal agency declined to take action against Fox or Family Guy, presumably because they understood that explicit content permeating the entire program is the exact point of Family Guy.
During a separate tantrum thrown by Winter and his watchdog group, MacFarlane publicly addressed PTC’s hyper-conservative censorship agenda, telling Advocate magazine that he’s proud to be the PTC’s biggest target. “That’s like getting hate mail from Hitler. They’re literally terrible human beings. I’ve read their newsletter, I’ve visited their website, and they’re just rotten to the core,” MacFarlane said. “For an organization that prides itself on Christian values — I mean, I’m an atheist, so what do I know? — they spend their entire day hating people. They can all suck my dick as far as I’m concerned.”
I’d say that MacFarlane would have been within his right to write a Family Guy episode about Winter offering such an oral apology for his constant harassment, but, honestly, that bit might be too tame for the show. Maybe he should put Winter in the middle of the now-twelve-way gay orgy next time.
