Trying to understand something here . . .

This story on NPR is about something that lots of blogs have been commenting on recently: a TV ad submitted to the several networks by the United Church of Christ that was rejected by NBC and CBS as being too controversial. The UCC's controversial stance, apparently, is its inclusivity at a time when the public perception of mainstream religion (as I note in this earlier post) is decidedly not one of inclusivity.
If you listen to the story and/or watch the ad, you'll see that two bouncers at the door of a church deny entrance to a gay couple--this moment, in the eyes of the networks, is the cause of the controversy. NBC and CBS both rejected the ad for the same basic reason: they reject what they call "advocacy ads." But CBS also, in its rejection, added the additional reason that the "Executive Branch" had recently offered its support to a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. As the NPR story has the president of the UCC note, CBS's wording suggests that the network has its finger in the political winds and has decided that an ad that implicitly challenges the current administration's positions would be a risky act: self-censorship, in other words (which is not to say that there should NOT be decency standards of some sort on the broadcast networks). It could also be, given the fiasco of the forged National Guard documents that Dan Rather claimed were authentic and showed that President Bush had received preferential treatment in the Texas Air National Guard, that CBS wanted to avoid yet another impression that it has a "liberal" agenda and/or is out to attack Bush. Maybe--that last is my speculation.
NBC's rejection, though, is harder to understand, and I can sum up my confusion in two words and an ampersand: Will and Grace. True, Will's family and their unease with his homosexuality is sometimes used as a plot device, but the show clearly approves of his sexual orientation. The show, in fact, seems to me to be as much an implicit advocation of openness and tolerance as the UCC ad is explicit in stating same. I suppose that somewhere there exists in the network's policies a distinction made between advocacy and entertainment, but clearly art advocates, implicitly or ex-, ways of thinking about the world--which, of course, is a kind of politics as well.
But the real crux here, it seems to me, is this: that the rejection of the UCC ad is not a healthy sign for religion and its right to offer dissenting views in public forums. I'm not quite to the point of saying that conservative Christians are thinking of themselves as a state church but, judging by this story, it seems clear that a chill is in the air as regards some denominations' feeling comfortable in expressing their stances on the issues of the day, and that is not a good thing. It also seems, in the case of NBC, that its rejection of the ad on the one hand and its continuing renewal of Will & Grace on the other is a contradiction that I, simpleton that I am, find difficult to reconcile.