On Promoting the Gay Agenda

Hint: it's not written on high quality, color coordinated stationery.

Supposedly it's to be found in videos featuring SpongeBob SquarePants.

I'm not kidding.

Jesus H. Christ (pun intended), do you think that maybe--just maybe--the REAL story here is a bunch of Jesus freaks with a little too much spare time on their hands?

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Conservative Christian groups accuse the makers of a video starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney and a host of other cartoon characters of promoting homosexuality to children...

"A short step beneath the surface reveals that one of the differences being celebrated is homosexuality," wrote Ed Vitagliano in an article for the American Family Association...

Christian groups however have taken exception to the tolerance pledge on the foundation's Web site, which asks people to respect the sexual identity of others along with their abilities, beliefs, culture and race.

"Their inclusion of the reference to 'sexual identity" within their 'tolerance pledge' is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line," James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said in a statement released Thursday.

This one fails the laugh test--yet CNN, apparently with a straight face, concludes with

SpongeBob, who lives in a pineapple under the sea, was "outed" by the U.S. media in 2002 after reports that the TV show and its merchandise are popular with gays. His creator, Stephen Hillenburg, said at the time that though SpongeBob was an oddball, he thought of all the characters in the show as asexual.

It is not the first time that children's TV favorites have come under the critical spotlight of the Christian right. In 1999, the Rev. Jerry Falwell described Tinky Winky, the purse-toting purple Teletubbie, as a gay role model.

Two things: I'll admit that the only thing I know about SpongeBob SquarePants is that it's a cartoon--a FREAKING CARTOON, for chrissakes! Never seen it, never saw any products associated with it, never saw the balloon effigies that were floating around (I think) Burger Kings, etc...but it's a goddamn cartoon. Jesus freaks spending their waking hours obsessing over whether or not a cartoon character is gay is just...plain...weird. It speaks volumes.

Second--I honestly hope the cartoon character DOES promote tolerance. That's a good thing. And I'm goddamned sick and tired of hearing the "debate" over whether or not gays and lesbians are normal or depraved, degenerate rakes. Gays and lesbians are...(drumroll)...human beings. As such, they are capable of being as noble or as evil as anyone else, and it's not their sexual orientation that makes them good or bad.

Yesterday, James Wolcott had his own take on this, and it's worth noting.