A PBS cartoon show has come under fire for an upcoming episode featuring a lesbian couple who makes maple syrup.
Postcards from Buster, a spin-off of the PBS Cartoon show Arthur involves the protagonist, a rabbit named Buster Baxter, going across the United States, sending video postcards to his friends as he travels. Unfortunately, he happened to end up in Vermont to show how to make maple syrup, and the kids there intoduced the viewers to her mom and "Gillian."
Newly-inserted Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings wouldn't have any of it. "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode," she said in a letter to PBS President Pat Mitchell. Funding for the episode by the federal government was cut off solely because they depicted a lesbian.
Spellings said that by law, anything with funding must have "research-based educational objectives, content, and materials." She fails to indicate why showing lesbians in the show, which only had a brief part in the show, did not meet this.
And of course, every conservative from Concerned Woman for America to Focus on the "Family" are cheering this "brave" woman.
The show Postcards from Buster is about diversity, and has shown the cultures of several families around the United States. Whether families would want to see a lesbian family or not simply cannot be a reason not to air this show. Lesbian families are a part of America too, and are part of the Diversity Buster Baxter is trying to show. The Department of Education needs to, quite literally, get with the program.
Buster Baxter joins Spongebob Squarepants as the latest victim of the conservative agenda. Yeah, that's right. Conservative Agenda. You know, not all of us are Conservatives. Besides, thanks to the tantrum throwing of what will no doubt be the John Ashcroft of the Department of Education, we'll all miss a very informative story on how we make maple syrup, all because a couple, which only had a brief part of the story, were lesbians.
[Editor's note: the program doesn't even mention that these are lesbians, and the context is completely non-sexual. They're just two women who make syrup who happen to be lesbians, a fact that is not even mentioned in the program. It would seem the Conservative Activists are so obsessed with sex that they cannot comprehend two lesbians in a non-sexual context; the sole reason they're offended by this episode is that they happen to know that these women are lesbians. They're simply offended by reality. They're offended simply by the appearance of lesbians on television, almost as though they believe that lesbians do not exist and as such have no place on TV or that the mere presense of lesbians on television is some unimaginable horror.
So here's a clue for the Conservative Activists: there are lesbians, everywhere. Some of them even make syrup. And here's another clue: the kids who watch this show on PBS have no idea what a lesbian is; most likely, they'll just think these women are friends who make syrup. It's only because you're sexually obsessed that you insist upon applying a sexual context to two women making syrup. You should be ashamed of yourselves.]
