Written by Eugene Price and directed by Bernard McEveety, the episode tells the story of a teenage boy who is raped by his male teacher.
[2] David Victor, creator of Marcus Welby, approached ABC in early 1974 with statistics compiled by the Los Angeles Police Department detailing the extent of child molestation.
[3][4] ABC sent the preliminary script for "The Outrage" to Ronald Gold, media director for the newly formed National Gay Task Force (NGTF), in July 1974.
Gold advised ABC's Standards and Practices department that the script, which conflated homosexuality with pedophilia, effeminacy, and the rape of children, was unacceptable in its present form.
Richard Gitter of the network's Standards and Practices department defended the episode's social value, saying that "the importance of the script is to present to the public the problems of coping with such a tragic situation by the young assaulted victim.
[9] Activists across the country remained concerned, especially since the episode's anticipated October broadcast date placed it close to several votes in state and local legislatures that would have extended anti-discrimination laws to cover sexual orientation.
"We feel the program will definitely have a chilling effect on legislation which would protect gays from discrimination in employment and housing," stated NGTF executive director Bruce Voeller.
[12] Demonstrations were held on the day of the broadcast outside stations in Dallas,[13] San Francisco,[14] Madison, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and in small towns in Ohio, Iowa, Mississippi, Texas, and Idaho.
Several sponsors, including Bayer, Gallo Wine, Listerine, Ralston-Purina,[10] Colgate-Palmolive, Shell Oil, Lipton, American Home Products, Breck, Sterling Drug, and Gillette, refused to advertise during the episode.
John J. O'Connor, writing for The New York Times, sympathized with the concerns of the demonstrators but asked, "At what point does the understandable anxiety of homosexual groups become censorship or prior restraint?
Ultimately Swertlow supported the right of the network to air the episode, saying that it deals with concepts that are "facts of life, and it is time we faced them openly".
[16] Each believed that a documentary special or made-for-television film would have been a better forum, with O'Connor citing the recent Linda Blair vehicle Born Innocent as an example.