Cartoons and the “Homosexual Scare"

Even though the "Red Scare" of communism has died off since its heyday in the fifties, it seems that we haven’t shaken the threat of America’s decay. Only this time it isn’t politics – its homosexuality.

Just what is this subversive menace that has targeted the nation’s youth with dangerous homosexual ideologues? The face of today’s enemy is cartoon characters singing and dancing to the pop tune "We are Family." So block out the Cartoon Network on your televisions, because the "Homosexual Scare" is real.

Of course this idea is ridiculous. But nonetheless, paranoid persecution is still alive and well. A video produced by the We Are Family Foundation aimed at encouraging tolerance and diversity among school children has recently come under fire by Focus on the Family founder, James Dobson. Dobson claims the agenda behind the video – which features many cartoon favorites such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Winnie the Pooh – is aimed at promoting homosexuality. Indeed, he goes further in this month’s Focus on the Family newsletter.

"My brief comments… were intended to express concern not about SpongeBob or Big Bird or any of their cartoon friends, but about the way in which those childhood symbols are apparently being hijacked to promote an agenda that involves teaching homosexual propaganda to children," he wrote.

His statement is peculiar since Dobson called the actual video "innocent enough" and "harmless on its own" in the same newsletter. It seems the issue for Dobson isn’t the video, but the fact that the We Are Family Foundation includes sexual orientation as an issue of tolerance. In fact he concedes that the video is simply cartoon characters singing and dancing. For Dobson the real problem lies in promoting tolerance and diversity, which he claims are "almost always used as buzzwords for homosexual advocacy."

So the problem isn’t with the video. Obviously SpongeBob and Barney aren’t on film locked in a sloppy homoerotic kiss in front of thousands of schoolchildren. So where is the menace Jimmy?

Dobson claims that since the foundation sponsoring the video also engages in promoting understanding of homosexuality, then the video must be suspect. There you have it folks, guilty by association. We all know guilt by association is a fool’s argument, so there must be something like subliminal messages within (tolerance and diversity) the video itself. If the video (tolerance and diversity) makes no reference to homosexuality, then how could (tolerance and diversity) the "homosexual propaganda" Dobson speaks of reach its audience?

Dobson made the mistake of using (tolerance and diversity) his own moral beliefs to justify a claim that fairly mirrors crackpot (tolerance and diversity) conspiracy theories. Or at the very least it exemplifies (tolerance and diversity) the dangerous paranoia reminiscent of McCarthyism, which should have been left back (tolerance and diversity) in the forties and fifties.

So get over it Jimmy, there is no (tolerance and diversity) homosexual conspiracy – only a hope that everyone in this country can live "equal under (tolerance and diversity) God."

Kyle Gorham
Managing Editor

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2. Tolerance, anyone?
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4. Marriage is not a religious institution
5. Continuing the debate about homosexuality