Special someone

PBSKIDS

Alabama, the armpit of the USA, decided not to air an episode of Arthur, the PBS children's cartoon, because Mr. Ratburn, Arthur's teacher, was getting married. To a male aardvark. Yes, that happened. In the United States. Where same-sex marriage is legal. In 2019.

Arthur's autahor weighed in:

‘Why shouldn’t their teacher marry another man? We all know people who are gay, who are trans, and it’s something that is socially acceptable. Why is there this discomfort that it takes a leap into our national media?” ‘I don’t want children or people who are different to feel excluded,’ he continued. ‘That’s not the kind of world we want to live in. And we want children to be educated so they can see there’s not just one type of family. Everyone should feel represented. I think we did that with Arthur.’

Instead the Alabama PBS station aired a re-run. Because of the long-used excuse of the religious wrong of claiming the idiotic 'think of the children'. Apparently watching a rat and an aardvark getting married was the line in the sand for a state that wanted Roy Moore  (who allegedly roamed malls looking for high school students to... 'talk to'?) in the senate. And it's not the first time they've done it. They also refused to show an episode with a rabbit with two moms. Really.

Their bigotry and blinding ignorance usually rear their ugly head very often. Remember they also have the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the country. They banned almost all abortions. And the Governor -a woman- signed it into law. It's a blatantly transparent attempt to join other equally bigoted states in an effort to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

With two SCOTUS appointees from Cheeto crowding the bench and tipping it towards the religious right wet dream of controlling what children know and learn about LGBTQ people and controlling women's sexuality -and their wombs-, some people's optimism sounds pretty misplaced to me. For me, these actions do terrible harm to individual people's rights. They make other states think they CAN do this kind of fuckery.

Ugh. I wanted to post something positive. So here you can watch the whole episode. Also, if you can, please donate to PBS and/or to NARAL to piss off the xtianists. Fuck the lot of them.

XOXO


P.S. here it is again, with only the wedding episode, just in case:

Okay, so Mr. Ratburn from "Arthur" IS GAY AND JUST GOT MARRIED. What a wonderful kind of day ❤️🌈 #loveislove pic.twitter.com/l9gL4z37JM

— Cultura Colectiva (@ccplus) May 13, 2019

A beloved 'Arthur' character, Mr. Ratburn, came out and got married on the show's 22nd-season premier, and fans are loving it. https://t.co/8wlznBUYkd

— Cultura Colectiva (@ccplus) May 14, 2019