This is too funny. People are so scared of gays, I'll never figure out why.

Ok, copy/pasted:

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Happy little SpongeBob too gay for US conservatives

On the heels of electoral victories to bar same-sex marriage, some influential conservative Christian groups are turning their attention to a new target: the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants.

"Does anybody here know SpongeBob?" Dr James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, asked guests on Tuesday at a black-tie dinner for members of Congress and political allies.

In many circles, SpongeBob needs no introduction. He is popular among children as well as adults who watch him cavorting under the sea on the Nickelodeon cartoon program that bears his name. In addition, he has become a well-known camp figure among adult gay men, perhaps because he holds hands with his animated sidekick Patrick and likes to watch the imaginary television show The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy.

Now, Dr Dobson said, SpongeBob's creators had enlisted him in a "pro-homosexual video", in which he appeared alongside other children's television characters. The makers of the video, he said, planned to mail it to thousands of schools this northern spring to promote a "tolerance pledge" that includes tolerance for differences of "sexual identity".

The video's creator, Nile Rodgers, who wrote the disco hit We Are Family and led the group Chic, says Dr Dobson's objection stemmed from a misunderstanding. Rodgers said he founded the We Are Family Foundation after the September 11 attacks to create a music video featuring 100 well-known cartoon characters dancing to his song to teach children about multiculturalism.

Nothing in the video or its accompanying materials refers to sexual identity.

Rodgers suggested that Dr Dobson might have been confused because of an unrelated website belonging to another group called We Are Family. That site is owned by a South Carolina group aimed at supporting gay youth.

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Edit: you can find it on cnn too:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/20/sponge.bob.reut/index.html

Reynar fucked around with this message on 01-21-2005 at 09:03 AM.

Because if your son isn't watching some ultra violent action cartoon, he's going to turn into a sissy queer! And if your daughter isn't playing the helpless damsel in distress, she's sure to be a butch dyke!

-Tok

Toktuk fucked around with this message on 01-21-2005 at 09:13 AM.

I never thought I would see a politics thread about Spongebob.

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Mr. Gainsborough thought about the meaning of life:
lol dora the explorer..like exploring her sexuality...her homosexuality..ahahahahaha...yeah

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Pull your mind away from your porn cartoons for half a second and focus on the issue at hand. As a parent, I think these types of shows are really good teaching tools that re-enforce the types of morals you want to instill in your children. To an adult, Barney may come across as really cheesy and over the top. But the thing about that show is that there is a big mix of children from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. If my kid picks up tolerance of other cultures from Barney at a young age, I'm okay with that. Christian fundamentalists don't want tolerate other religions, so it's in their best interest to see these types of messages squashed. Which, if you think about it, is the ultimate hypocrisy. One of the largest themes in Christianity is tolerance.

-Tok

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Toktuk's account was hax0red to write:
Listened to this on the radio this morning. Spongebob wasn't the only cartoon. Basically they're naming every non-confrontational male character (Barney, Pooh, etc) or independant thinking female (Dora).

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I think they are targeting those other characters because they are in the same video, not necessarily because of the character's attributes.

A yahoo story with some more details.

By the way, these people are pretty hard up for something to protest if they are picking on a video that doesn't even mention sexual orientation (it only being mentioned in one sentence on the video's website..).

Zair fucked around with this message on 01-21-2005 at 09:45 AM.

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Blindy. said this:
They are shocked and offended that someone suggests they might want to be tolorant to gays, because gays are evil. the bible says so.

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If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. they must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads. - Leviticus 20:13

One of the most untrue passages in the bible.

-Yuri- fucked around with this message on 01-21-2005 at 10:07 AM.

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And coming in at #1 is Blindy. with "Reply." I'm Casey Casem.
They are shocked and offended that someone suggests they might want to be tolorant to gays, because gays are evil. the bible says so.

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Also, it's easier to be righteously intolerant than it is to keep one's mouth shut and live and let live. And, if anyone speaks out against you, you can claim that they hate Christianity/religion/America, rather than addressing their arguments. It's a pretty sweet deal, if you can stomach being an unrepentant bigot.

Fundamentalists piss me off, all serious modern day religions exist because they provide a good moral foundation for societies to live by. These dickheads look for messages of hate and fear and scream them from the rooftops to keep people at odds with non-followers.

Yay to religion, nay to organized religion.

-Tok

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This is too funny. People are so scared of gays, I'll never figure out why.

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Because thinking about gays = thinking about sex, and from our puritan heritage, thinking about sex, exclusively, is a bad thing.

Vernaltemptress fucked around with this message on 01-21-2005 at 10:36 AM.

I find it funny, that as Tok said, if kids don't watch manly, violent cartoons, they're gonna become gay, but if they watch violent cartoons, then they are going to become homicidial maniacs and are going to start going on killing sprees.

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Toktuk got all f'ed up on Angel Dust and wrote:
Pull your mind away from your porn cartoons for half a second and focus on the issue at hand. As a parent, I think these types of shows are really good teaching tools that re-enforce the types of morals you want to instill in your children. To an adult, Barney may come across as really cheesy and over the top. But the thing about that show is that there is a big mix of children from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. If my kid picks up tolerance of other cultures from Barney at a young age, I'm okay with that. Christian fundamentalists don't want tolerate other religions, so it's in their best interest to see these types of messages squashed. Which, if you think about it, is the ultimate hypocrisy. One of the largest themes in Christianity is tolerance.

-Tok

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Sesame Street?

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/dev/null had this to say about Captain Planet:
Sesame Street?

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Fags. All of them.

This whole thing is really lame.

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And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and /dev/null was all like:
Sesame Street?

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Bert and Ernie.

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Mr. Gainsborough's unholy Backstreet Boys obsession manifested in:
lol dora the explorer..like exploring her sexuality...her homosexuality..ahahahahaha...yeah

I never thought I would see a politics thread about Spongebob.

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Dora the Ora Explora.

1. Whether or not it started out as a gay symbol, a lot of times gay whackos (not, I should clarify normal gay folks; the asshats are what I'm talking about here) pick out cartoon or childrens' show characters. Remember the whole deal with that teletubby? The purple one was the gay icon du jour for a while.

What's really frustrating about it is that an icon for gay couples comes from a kids' show. That's a dangerous line to walk as it is, even if it's a straight person (and we see straight people fantasizing about some childrens' show characters of ambiguous age). Gay people "claiming" a teletubby or a kids' show character like SpongeBob is a great way to keep the "child-molesting gay guy" stereotype alive and well.

And they DO IT TO THEMSELVES. Then when someone calls them on it, the community mobilizes and suddenly it snowballs. Lovely.

2. People shouldn't delude themselves into thinking kids' shows today are any more deep than they were in the past. Transformers had a storyline, but only if you watched things seasons at a time. Where I grew up, they were often showed out of order or the like. I imagine people looked at my interest in Transformers the way I look on in horrified disbelief at the fact Power Rangers is still on with some of the original people.

Barney (and to a lesser extent SpongeBob) are aggravating because they ended up with their faces plastered on everything; NOT because they're cheesy. Transformers (admittedly for a somewhat later age group) were cheesy, and may have been a big marketing engine, but let's be honest...it wasn't supposed to teach kids values. Barney is, I suppose. To people without kids, Barney seems a ludicrously bad role model, for one thing, and has all the charm of a media blitz. SpongeBob doesn't at least seem to be akin to Barney...but he is every bloody where.

3. Any time any sort of group mobilizes on something as ludicrous as this, you can usually afford to tune it out. Teletubbies weren't hurt by the allegation the purple one was meant to be gay. They faded out because our society has a collective attention deficit disorder in regards to "Edutainment". Religious political conservatives are, by and large, known for being paranoid about this sort of thing. It's an embarrassing fact, just like democrats have the Kennedy antics. This is neither "new" nor is it "shocking" so why people always act like it's shocking news when it happens is beyond me.

4. Last I heard Spongebob was like a cult hero to dope-smoking college students.

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Toktuk got all f'ed up on Angel Dust and wrote:
Christian fundamentalists don't want tolerate other religions, so it's in their best interest to see these types of messages squashed. Which, if you think about it, is the ultimate hypocrisy. One of the largest themes in Christianity is tolerance.

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I'm not usually one to defend religion (I tend to do the opposite, in fact), but I feel the need to say something to that.

For some Christians, they actually do think about saving souls. They feel that, if they don't do everything they can to get through to everyone they can, that they've simply let people be left to Satan and damned to Hell.

With that mindset, other religions are people trying to lead you astray to ruin. Kinda like drug pushers on a gradeschool playground. It's only natural that they'll do whatever they can to keep other religions away.

I'm not saying I agree with it (trust me, I don't), but it's important to understand that some of them do it with honest good faith and the purest intentions.

I get the feeling that there's more I should say to get the point across clearer, but I'm tired and can't think any straighter than that.

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Palador ChibiDragon had this to say about Knight Rider:
-snip-

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I was bashing fundamentalists, not religion. You totally missed my point.

-Tok

Toktuk fucked around with this message on 01-23-2005 at 10:42 PM.

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Toktuk spewed forth this undeniable truth:
Duder, I was bashing fundamentalists, not religion. You totally missed my point.

-Tok

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Yah, I did. It was late, and I was tired. Don't mind me.

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Death of Rats probably says this to all the girls:
I find it funny, that as Tok said, if kids don't watch manly, violent cartoons, they're gonna become gay, but if they watch violent cartoons, then they are going to become homicidial maniacs and are going to start going on killing sprees.

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Yar, this is a good point. To clarify: I'm also not one of those parents who purposefully keep their kids from watching more violent shows like Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles. My son watches that stuff to. I monitor how he's reacting to stuff like that and if I think he's getting too rowdy, we sit down and talk about it. Power Rangers don't fight unless bad guys push them to do it, stuff like that. He's 4, so I really doubt any of the stuff we talk about sinks in, but I still make a point to talk to him about it because I know sooner or later what I'm saying will click with him as long as I keep re-enforcing it.

I think a lot of people just don't want to have to go through the trouble of explaining things to their kids these days, so they choose to hide everything from them. It's easier to ignore issues than to try and address them head on. IMO, exposing your child to too much of anything will leave them either too sheltered or too violent. I try to expose my son to as wide of a variety of things as possible (within reason, of course).

-Tok

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Toktuk wrote, obviously thinking too hard:
Yar, this is a good point. To clarify: I'm also not one of those parents who purposefully keep their kids from watching more violent shows like Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles. My son watches that stuff to. I monitor how he's reacting to stuff like that and if I think he's getting too rowdy, we sit down and talk about it. Power Rangers don't fight unless bad guys push them to do it, stuff like that. He's 4, so I really doubt any of the stuff we talk about sinks in, but I still make a point to talk to him about it because I know sooner or later what I'm saying will click with him as long as I keep re-enforcing it.

I think a lot of people just don't want to have to go through the trouble of explaining things to their kids these days, so they choose to hide everything from them. It's easier to ignore issues than to try and address them head on. IMO, exposing your child to too much of anything will leave them either too sheltered or too violent. I try to expose my son to as wide of a variety of things as possible (within reason, of course).

-Tok

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I completely agree. When my sister's son asks me "Why" to something, I try to explain it to him as completely as I can in concepts he can understand. Obviously at three years of age he's not going to understand it all, but I think even if I end up having to repeat an explanation at some point, it's important that children learn that 1. it's good to think about things, 2. they should always feel free to ask "Why?" about something, and 3. they should reasonably expect that an adult will try to explain something to them. I LOATHE the idea of not taking responsibility for what a kid picks up.

Therefore, exactly like you said, Tok, I wouldn't take Chase to see a rated R or PG-13 movie. At his age, there are even some PG movies I'd be iffy about. When Lyinar's son was down summer before last, and she and I went to see "Hulk" we really had to talk about whether or not it was a movie appropriate for him. There was a lot of creepy psychological stuff going on there. It wasn't like Spider-Man, where things were more accessible to youngsters. But there are always parents who'll take their four year old to see a movie like Jurassic Park, then come out of the theater furious that it was *GASP* not okay for little kids!

Idiots. Idiots and morons.

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Ja'Deth Issar Ka'bael had this to say about Jimmy Carter:
Idiots. Idiots and morons.

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And they're breeding.

Yea, maybe I should pay more attention to what these fucktards are doing. If someone doesnt, they will end up right back at burning people like my self at the stake. At least when I burn people its for a religious sacrifice, not from hate and fear.

[spelling policy wont catch me!]

Vinven D`Slyfox fucked around with this message on 01-24-2005 at 02:00 AM.

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Noni had this to say about Captain Planet:
but what it comes down to is the........PARENTS....guess who has the power to turn off the damn TV....dont like what your watching, change the channel or turn it off!!! take your kids out t the park and play. they'll learn more that way anyhow....i HATE the stupid...Hello to all yous

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I hope you didn't find these boards by looking for spongebob.

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nem-x had this to say about pies:
I hope you didn't find these boards by looking for spongebob.

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oh hell no...if it's gotten that bad we need to start stationing guards or something.