interspark said:
this has been bothering me for a while, we have a community that is in a largely public agreement that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality, and yet, in kid's shows you'll often see male and female characters who are attracted to one another but never those of the same sex? and you can say "kids wont understand that" but i know for a fact that when i have kids, i certainly won't let them grow up under the delusion that only people of opposite genders can fall in love and get married!
so what are your opinions?
My opinion on the subject is quite simply that propaganda aimed at children has gone too far already and we need to dial back on that a lot, everyone seems to want to take the "get 'em while their young" approach with thier message and want it intergrated into children's programming and I don't think that's a good idea, especially on issues like this. It's not just that I'm anti-gay men, as I'd object to someone doing it with an anti-gay message as well.
When we're looking at children's programming, it's aimed at a pre-sexual audience. You really aren't seeing much in the way of sexual behavior at that level, and I think it needs to be kept that way. When your dealing with an older audience, teenagers and late "pre-teens" that's a little differant, however I really don't think it's a good idea to start introducing gay characters into shows like say "Thomas The Tank Engine".
Ignoring my personal thoughts on the subject, since I have no desire to get into a massive arguement on gay rights, or the lack thereof, even if your totally accepting of all kinds of sexual activity, I think it's very important to keep things in touch with reality. Homosexuals are pretty rare overall, despite some attempts to portray it as a major
societal demographic. It's a rare enough state of being where I don't think it needs more treatment than it's already receiving. Right now we already have a gay prescence in a lot of teen dramas and movies aimed at that demographic. That's fine, and shows someone who might be turning out that way that they aren't alone. Any more than that takes what is really a fringe prescence and turns it into something else.
People get offended by the negative way people throw around the word "gay" all the time, or even how frequently the term is used. Honestly I think that part of the problem comes from people trying to make that kind of thing seem a lot less rare than it actually is, which leads to a lot of this backlash. Truthfully I think what the gay rights movement needs to do is back off... a lot. Constant pressure is doing a lot of the damage, and honestly when you start talking about wanting a gay presence in children's shows that's exactly the kind of crap that leads to a lot of the homophobic backlash and provides fuel for the conspiricy theories. Gays already have protection from the law, and a lot of the failings that existed have been addressed, there is a mild media prescence befitting a small group of people. Further pushing is counter productive. I think a lot of the biggest "homophobes" wound up that way largely because of people wanting to push this stuff into their house so to speak, and introducing a "new gay friend" for Barney The Purple Dinosaur is an example of the kind of thing that irritates people. That's not "we just want to be left alone and do our thing" that's "we want to bring it into your home and wave it around in your face, we want to make sure we are everywhere you go in society,and intergrated into everything no matter what our actual numbers are"... and honestly, that's going to PO people no matter what the minority in the group is or what it stands for.
As I mentioned above, I AM anti-gay men, but I'm hardly on a "God hates them" kick, or some kind of mad exterminator. I doubt you'll like what I think (I'm not going to argue it again right now, as I've done so many times) but you might find it interesting if some of it's still in the back logs. That doesn't have a lot to do with what we're discussing though, because I think the gay rights movement needs to be seperated from the issue of gay rights itself and the actual issues. The "movement" is increasingly more of a political thing about grabbing power than anything else. It's original objectives have long since been met, and it continually winds up pushing for more and more, irregardless of common sense. I am not sure if you TOTALLY made this question up to gauge reactions, or if this is a real issue, however it DOES sound like something the modern gay rights movement would push for nowadays, and the thing to consider is that it's EXACTLY the kind of move that was called ridiculous and paranoid if someone was to suggest that they would ever push for something like this.
Not every anti-gay person is a monster, and not every demand from a social movement is inherantly reasonable.
Simply put, irregardless of where you stand, young children are non-sexual. I don't agree with censoring everything to protect them, but I DO object to aiming politically charged sexual material at them deliberatly. If you must go there, wait until the end of Jr. High (like 13 years old, approaching 14) at the very earliest before you start tossing that stuff out there. That's when kids start to develop sexually, will have those urges and developing identities, and ned to come to grips with it. Little kids who are pre-sexual and don't have those kinds of urges and instincts yet don't need to be hammered with this kind of thing.
