I watched the recent Arthur cartoon where his teacher, Mr.
Rathburn “marries” his boyfriend.
The state of Alabama refused to show it on their public
television, repeating a practice they did in 2005 when they refused to air
another content-questionable episode.
On Good Morning America, Robin Roberts commented that a real
teachable moment was missed when Alabama pulled the show.
I had to think about this one a little bit.
Ready to Learn Television is a federal program that funds
shows on PBS, like Arthur. The purpose
of the Ready to Learn initiative is to “promote early learning and school
readiness, with a particular interest in reaching low-income children.”
From what I can see, this funding agreement
(which is managed by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation
and Improvement) is primarily centered around educational readiness.
Ready
to Learn “enables local public television stations nationwide to help close
the achievement gap for the nation’s youngest learners.”
It is a competitive grant that “helps support the creation
of highly researched children’s educational media content and community
outreach targeted to help low-income learners ages 2-8 succeed in school. The
content introduces children to key science, literacy and math concepts early to
prepare them for school while boosting their long-term educational
opportunities.
That’s what they are supposed to be doing with their
funding.
The controversy about the same-sex "wedding" in the Arthur
cartoon brings up some questions I suspect some people might ask:
--If same-sex couples are a reality, should television, and
this cartoon in particular, reflect that?
--Should such a show be endorsed or even promoted?
--Is this a misuse of federal grant money?
--Should parents be able to trust a familiar cartoon to not
insert content unrelated to the show’s prescribed goals?
--Whose responsibility is it to teach our children
values?
I think Roberts’ comment, in reverse, brings up the question—what was actually being taught?
Here are a few things I noted about the show as I watched it:
This episode is 100% agenda driven. There’s no getting around it—personal
happiness is the only thing that matters when finding a mate and the normalization
of same-sex unions is the goal.
The hope is that one day same-sex unions will be so
commonplace, nobody will even notice, or care, as the show idealized. No one was surprised or even mentioned the
fact that the wedding involved two men.
Ho Hum was clearly the hoped-for response.
The other thing this episode lays out is the idea that as
long as you marry whoever makes you happy, nothing else matters. But the
reality is, there is a great deal more to marriage than YOU and YOUR
happiness.
Me-centered marriages
rarely work.
Don’t get me wrong, happiness is important, especially in
marriage. In fact, God wants all of us to be eternally happy, so his design
leads us to that.
But I digress.
A few things have occurred to me:
They have the right to produce the show.
Television stations have the right to refuse to show it.
Parents have the right to turn it off.
I do think we should be able to expect a trusted show not to
throw in unexpected content that is agenda-driven.
It doesn’t sound to me like the cartoon stayed true to the
intended use of the federal grant money they have been given.
As the struggle to redefine marriage outside the bounds of
the framework in which God created it to exist, i. e., marriage between a man
and a woman, continues, it is necessary to point out that this is the only
arrangement that holds up under scrutiny.
It cannot be denied that we are physically made in the image
of God to share in the important work of procreation within the marital union
of a husband and wife.
Returning to the idea of happiness, then, it is important to
realize that we may be called to lay aside our personal desire and immediate
happiness if it is in direct conflict with the Divine will, even when it causes
us tremendous personal sacrifice.
A healthy way to look at this is that our sacrifice may be
joined with that of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, which, as it turns
out, leads to our true and final, ultimate happiness.
God created this world and he has not left it for us to
redesign.
I think these are important things to think about.
Janet Cassidy
Janetcassidy.blogspot.com
Janetcassidy.blubrry.net
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