Hot-button issues move from ballot box to TV screen

Only a fool would hazard a guess as to what might happen on Election Day 2012.

But here’s a safe prediction: Between now and next November you’re going to hear almost nothing about the so-called “wedge issues” that have dominated our national discourse the past decade.

Abortion, gay rights, gun rights, patriotism … these and other solid-gold favorites were MIA on most voters’ ballots last week. The one exception, an initiative in Mississippi to outlaw many forms of contraception, was solidly rejected by the state’s abortion-opponent majority. Some were quick to blame the defeat on poor strategy by supporters of the “personhood amendment.” But maybe Mississippians were telling their elected officials to focus on the prospects of their already-born children — by fixing the economy and Medicare.

That’s not to say there’s a truce being called in the culture wars. Just turn on your TV, where the battleground has shifted to the entertainment side of the dial.

On TLC you have “All-American Muslim,” starting tonight, a reality series about residents of Dearborn, Mich., one of the country’s largest Arab-America communities, as they interact with non-Muslims at work, school and in love.

On Dec. 1, Discovery Channel airs “Weed Wars,” about Steve DeAngelo, whose controversial clinic in California dispenses medical marijuana to more than 90,000 customers.

Like most slice-of-life reality shows — and let’s throw Discovery’s “American Guns” in the soup while we’re at it — these programs homogenize and simplify lightning-rod issues by finding highly sympathetic spokesmen and women to represent the “pro” side. These are people so appealing that only a hateful jerk could oppose them (which is how their adversaries usually wind up looking on the shows).

By contrast, scripted dramas don’t have to be so nicey-nice. Lately, there has been a welter of abortion-themed episodes on some of the more popular cable dramas.

Exhibit A, “American Horror Story” on FX. In case you’ve been avoiding this show, either because of the word “Horror” in the title or the mixed reaction from critics — for the record, I love it even when I don’t understand it — “American Horror Story” revolves around a family that moves into a haunted house where bad things have routinely happened to people for the past 90 years.

The very first of those bad things, it seems, was abortion. Dr. Charles Montgomery, the original occupant, paid for his lavish, drug-fueled Roaring ‘20s lifestyle by terminating the pregnancies of unlucky flappers, then keeping the fetuses in jars for experiments. Abortion rights groups, naturally, are furious at this depiction.

“Not only are doctors that perform abortions evil, money-grubbing, exploitative human beings, they’re totally (bleeping) crazy,” ranted Sophia, a contributor to the Abortion Gang blog. Over on io9.com, reviewer Meredith Woerner called the whole abortion subplot “gross” but admitted that she was “eagerly awaiting answers” as to what it all meant.

That’s the thing about “American Horror Story.” It presents a menagerie of weirdos doing bizarre and inexplicable things to each other in ways that remind you of old high-concept slasher films. Yes, it stirs the pot on abortion, but it stirs the pot on everything — really well, in fact.

A more conventional abortion subplot popped up recently on “Boardwalk Empire,” HBO’s Prohibition-era drama, airing Sundays at 8 p.m. It involved Lucy (Paz de la Huerta), the frequently unclothed showgirl who wound up pregnant after a fling with a married G-man. He promised her $3,000 if she’d stay at home and carry the baby to term so he could surprise his wife (with the baby, not the news of his infidelity).

Sounds like a good deal, especially in 1920s dollars. But soon Lucy is feeling alone and desperate. That’s when she contemplates hurling herself down a flight of stairs — or as one reviewer put it, “the rickety late-term abortion steps.” But it turns out she is easily dissuaded: the G-man brings home a record player, and Lucy forgets her troubles as she sways to the music.

This seems an absurdly easy out for “Boardwalk Empire,” but then, writing is not the show’s strong suit. And it won’t win the Emmy for best drama until the writing improves.

Who knows, perhaps in a year or two it will lose out to “Wichita,” an abortion drama HBO is developing with veteran hand Alan Ball — he created “Six Feet Under” and “True Blood.” In case you haven’t heard yet about this show, it will be based on the life of George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became one of the few providers of late-term abortions and whose life was a cause célèbre long before he was murdered in 2009 by Scott Roeder.

The selection of Ball is telling. Other than “American Horror Story’s” Ryan Murphy, I can’t think of a more accomplished provocateur working in television today. Still, I wouldn’t presume to say where “Wichita” is headed. Ball prefers to create worlds of moral ambiguity: good vampires and bad vampires, likable adulterers and annoying martyrs.

One more wedge issue should be mentioned here, because it appears to be fading away for good, and that’s gay marriage. The question of legalized same-sex weddings got no traction in 2010, and it appears 2012 will be no different. That’s remarkable when you think about how much oxygen the issue took up in the three preceding election cycles. Between 2004 and 2008, voters in 26 states passed initiatives affirming that God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

One could argue that the defense of traditional marriage was trotted out as a distraction from two unfunded wars and that once it served its purpose it was no longer needed. But I think it was more than that. I think America changed in that decade, and I will prove it with two words:

“Modern Family.”

ABC’s mockumentary-style sitcom has one of the broadest appeals of any show on TV. In a 2009 survey, self-identifying Republicans rated “Modern Family” as their third-favorite TV show. This, despite the solidly sympathetic portrayal of a gay couple.

Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays Mitchell, one-half of that couple, told my colleague Brad Oswald of the Winnipeg Free Press that conservative viewers “come up to us saying, ‘You’ve changed my mind about gay marriage.’ ”

Well, maybe. The more likely scenario, I think, is that Mitchell and Cameron (played by our own Eric Stonestreet) remind some viewers that they were once opposed to gay marriage until they discovered someone they loved was gay. Someone as likable, if flawed, as Mitchell and Cam. Thus does a hot button become a warm fuzzy.

A better version of the story was told at the Emmys by the show’s co-creator, Steven Levitan. He said a gay couple came up to him recently and said, “You’re not just making people laugh, you’re making them more tolerant.” Levitan said he thought about it and realized, “Well, they were right. We are showing the world that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a loving, committed relationship between an old man and a hot young woman.”

Like “All in the Family” did 40 years ago, “Modern Family” has pulled off that rare feat of holding a mirror up to society … and showing society that it has changed. And because it’s done with a wink and a slap on the back, society doesn’t feel too bad about it.