Five years ago, right-wing evangelist Jerry Falwell threw a temper tantrum while watching a children's program.
Last week, Colorado-based right-wing group Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson threw a temper tantrum while watching a children's program.
Tuesday, our nation's new Education Secretary Margaret Spellings threw a temper tantrum while watching a children's program.
While it remains unclear as to whether these grown-ups were sent to their rooms without dinner, one thing is certain: they seem to have enough time on their hands to watch cartoons.
Falwell's crazed 1999 outburst over the sexual orientation of a Teletubbies character has been well documented. Not to be outdone by his fellow conservative zealot, Dobson now claims that SpongeBob SquarePants, Elmo, Jimmy Neutron, Big Bird and other characters are being used by a gay advocacy group in a conspiracy to promote homosexuality to children.
Many kids fear the boogieman that lives in their closets. Dobson wants children to fear the gay man who may redesign their closets.
The nonprofit group We are Family Foundation produced the video that caused Dobson's ire. The group's purpose is to promote multiculturalism. The video features a multitude of beloved children's entertainment characters having a good time to the backdrop of the classic '70s tune, "We Are Family." The video is going to be mailed to thousands of public schools in an effort to promote acceptance.
Dobson doesn't believe that SpongeBob himself is gay -- even he realizes that any self-respecting homosexual would never be caught wearing a necktie over a short-sleeved shirt tucked into a pair of shorts.
Hmm. Then again, he does live in a fruit with a roommate named Gary.
I attempted to contact Dobson for an interview, but was referred to a Focus on the Family media representative who referred me to a Web site of Dobson's weekly radio broadcast that referred me to a statement by Dobson concerning the matter.
Apparently, passing the buck is a key family value.
On his radio show, Dobson expresses his disgust over the video by claiming the group "has strong homosexual advocacy roots and biases."
Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family's vice president of public policy said, "What is at stake is the normalcy of homosexuality in public schools."
Unfortunately for Focus on the Family, The Associated Press reported in a Jan. 22 article, "the video contains no reference to gay rights or sexual orientation." A Jan. 20 New York Times article reported that Nile Rodgers (the video's creator) suggested that conservative groups irate over Rodgers' alleged ties to gay groups "might have been confused because of an unrelated Web site belonging to another group called We Are Family, which supports gay youth."
SpongeBob aside, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings -- an architect of President Bush's disastrous No Child Left Behind Act -- made sure no cartoon was left behind this week when she went after PBS's "Postcards from Buster."
The cartoon is meant to teach children to read, but Spellings couldn't help but read between the lines of a cartoon that features two lesbian couples. Concerned, she wrote a letter to PBS expressing her dismay.
Of course, as CNN.com reported Wednesday, the cartoon is not about lesbian couples, rather "the focus is on farm life and maple sugaring."
The point here is not that conservatives are making much ado about nothing -- that's not new. The real question is: What is so wrong with promoting tolerance?
We are not born to hate. We are taught to hate. While right-wingers protest that they do not teach hate, they fail to accept the consequences of their own overt failures to preach tolerance.
It is intolerance that has killed and will continue to kill the psyche of decent human beings whose only want in life is to be accepted for who they are. The late, great PBS children's show host Mr. Rogers accepted people in his neighborhood for who they were. No one was ever up in arms over him.
Religious zealots hedge their bigotry with statements such as, "love the sinner and hate the sin." This motto only serves as fodder for those who buy into the asinine notion that gays prefer to be gay and actually have a say in the matter.
Dobson lauds his Focus on the Family group as an unyielding force that has the best interests of our children in mind whenever it attempts to thwart the dangerous "gay agenda."
But, what is more dangerous: A lively sponge character that lives in a pineapple under the sea, or an intolerant demagogue who lives with his head buried in the sand?
Vic Vela is a journalism graduate student. Reach him at vic.vela@asu.edu.
