Please don’t attack @HeartofDixie who is willing to present her ideas.
I do agree though that you can’t choose who you fall in love with. It’s like being left-handed. You are, or you’re not. Or you’re ambidextrous. You can’t decide you’re right handed even if you’re told you should be. It’s painful, too.
However if the children know gay people exist, and know gay people whom they treat well and respect, why were they upset about the cartoon?
Perhaps if they’d watched it they wouldn’t be upset. Most of the show is dedicated to the children worried that their teacher picked someone who isn’t kind and trying to “help”. The wedding itself is almost nothing at the end.
It’s very sweet and, if you will, ‘benign’.
Perhaps Alabama could have run the episode and included some sort of information for parents, rather than deciding unilaterally that no family in Alabama could watch it?
So then you oppose a kid’s show that teaches the alphabet, or the baby shark song, or what a cow’s moo sounds like, because it’s not the job of media to decide to show kids one single thing they’ve not experienced before? Or is it only things that your religion disapproves of that you believe Alabama should censor? Realize, you are objecting to a show being made that depicts content most Americans think is fine.
I just don’t think it is the job of media to decide what kids need to know.
Then why is it the job of media to decide that my kids should not see gay people getting married–don’t understand this at all. Why should the media decide what MY kids see based on your religious beliefs.
Why isn’t it “appropriate for a children’s show”? Were the characters running around naked? Were they having sex? Were they engaging in violence? I fail to see what is “inappropriate” with two loving adults getting married.
I fail to see what is inappropriate as treating people like my daughter as normal, not as sinners who need to be stoned.
I guess the Arthur team could have made zero mention of this and the episode would have shown everywhere. Parents wouldn’t have known if thy wanted to discuss the topic though. For most children there’s nothing here, which the cartoon makes clear (the focus is NOT on the wedding).
I don’t think people are “attacking” @HeartofDixie…I’m interested in hearing her point of view because it represents a point of view that exists in some places. But I’m trying to understand what harm it is to children to be exposed to the reality and existence of gay marriages? They will be exposed even without the TV show, like it or not.
Such opinions are not moderating? In 2004, 60% of country was opposed to gay marriage. And it’s now 31%. So, in 15 years, half of the folks that were opposed to gay marriage in 2004 have changed their minds. Aren’t opinions moderating?
@Sue22, may I say that I love the word “kerfluffle” and am glad to see it has not been mentioned on the “words or phrases that are like nails on a chalkboard” thread?
128 yes, I too am trying to understand, because the cartoon was so innocuous - it's not like there was a wedding toast involving intersectionality and non binary identity issues :) (jk, ok).
Bad bad dancer - that was a big deal. Come on, teachers are supposed to know everything! How can they be bad at something! It’s sacrilegious ?
Opinions have radically changed. And there’s a huge generation gap - even Evangelical conservatives under the age of (24?30?) are majority fine with homosexuality and gay mariage, whereas older conservatives most definitely aren’t. Some may see it as a sin, but not a “special” sin.
Even Evangelical Christian colleges are changing on that account, not to mention the LDS church.
I don’t see the harm in broadcasting the cartoon. With an advisory for people in Alabama if deemed relevant to the state, so parents can choose to discuss the episode.
And I didn’t get why children are upset, because for kids born in the 21st century it has “always” been part of every day life.
Perhaps ‘attacking’ is the wrong word but heartofDixie is not speaking in the same tone as some previous posters so I think we can understand one another better.
I certainly understand wanting to protect your children from what we perceive as hurtful and potentially harmful media messages.
My adult kids grew up in a very sheltered bubble but it was impossible to shield them from casual homophobia on tv or the tabloid headlines they encountered when we checked out at the grocery. This was incredibly hurtful and harmful to our family, since a son is gay. Now those tabloid headlines “normalize” same sex couples. I’m happy about that. I’m even happier to see a same sex marriage on Arthur.
I’m from the deep south. Gay folks live in the south, including Alabama. Thousands of same sex couples have married in Alabama. So not everyone in the state was supporting the ban on the episode.
I live in a different southern state, in a very rural and mostly conservative, and traditionally homophobic community. The gay “kids” are coming back home after living all over the world. These southern sons are building retirement homes on family land with their husbands. Their families are overjoyed to have them back. This is how the world changes.
Here’s the thing unless you reject overwhelming scientific evidence you are left with the fact that 1) people do not choose to be gay 2) it would cause great harm to people to even attempt to change this fact about them and it wiill not work in any event 3) no one is harmed by others engaging in loving same sex relationships. ( The gay marriage cases detailed this science )
Reliance on religion to reject gay people has a problem here because unlike with much of belief which cannot be proved or disproved ( I cannot disprove the existence of a supreme being or that at some point that being has or can perform actions that appear impossible) there are incontrovertible facts in play here that makes arguments about “ two sides” and belief fatally flawed.
Once you accept the science, labeling gay people as doing something “ wrong” is, well in my book, morally wrong.
@soozievt Sorry again for misunderstanding you - I was eating lunch as I was reading CC so I guess I wasn’t reading closely enough! I have an older brother and other family members who are gay and have the exact same views as you.
From what I am reading it seems like the people who agree with Alabama not running the show are really only worried about the views of Christians (the ones who actually think this is a sin.) I don’t hear anybody saying there should be a warning for Mormons when a cartoon is about to show a tea party or a warning for Jehova’s Witnesses when they are about to throw a birthday party or a warning for Jewish people if they are about to have cartoon bacon with breakfast.
The fact that people are saying “most” people in Alabama would agree with this so it is OK is sad to me. What about the kids who are gay or have gay parents? One more way to let them know they are not looked at as “normal” in their own home state.
There are many rules or laws or commandments found in the Bible that we would never follow now. We have evolved socially and spiritually, so there are very few Christians who follow the Bible to the letter or take it literally or believe every sentence in it is relevant in the modern world. The men who wrote the Bible, or the Talmud, or the Quran (or fill in the blank with religious scripture) didn’t know what we now know about homosexuality and its biological etiology. So we can cut them some slack with regard to the philosophies they espoused regarding sexuality. They had no way of knowing that being gay is an inborn characteristic that is not chosen, much less “curable.”
But we NOW know differently, so I feel there is no excuse for the vitriol leveled at gay people today. When we know better, we do better, and I believe many of the authors of these religious texts would do better today if they had the benefit of the science to help them understand things they previously did not understand.
There are many modern day Christians who accept the science and do not label gay people as “sinners.” And they would appreciate being given the CHOICE of what to watch or what to allow their children to watch.
There was a time when many people put forward Biblical reasons for opposing inter-racial marriage, too. Of course, we are all past that now. And I’d like to think that any of us here, had we been adults fifty or a hundred years ago, would not have agreed with that opposition. But I think it’s very evident that that’s not true. Many people nowadays who think of themselves as thoughtful and fair-minded would, in another era, have opposed inter-racial marriage, because of religious interpretation, or simply not questioning what they were taught. Which is sad, isn’t it? We can understand the history of prejudice-dressed-in-cultural/religious-interpretation, and strive to do better. Can’t we?
@garland. I’ve said this before but forty nine years ago I remember going to a restaurant with my parents and the waiter was clearly gay ( even as an eight year old I saw him as very feminine ). My mother turned to me my father and said “can you believe that people think people choose to be gay” amd then when I asked 1) what gay meant and 2) what she meant about not choosing to be gay”.they told in this discussion my parents gave me a “there’s nothing wrong with it and people who don’t think that are wrong” message. It was only years later that I understood that this was not a common belief at the time.
