Much Ado about SpongeBob

He lives in a pineapple under the sea. And, apparently, he is teaching kids to be gay. Or at least that's what the media is saying Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family is saying.

To be fair to Dr. Dobson, that isn't really what he said.

From the outset, let's be clear that this issue is not about objections to any specific cartoon characters. Instead, Dr. Dobson is concerned that these popular animated personalities are being exploited by an organization that's determined to promote the acceptance of homosexuality among our nation's youth.

The flap is over a video produced by the We Are Family Foundation, which features many children's characters from a wide spectrum of shows and distributors, including Sesame Street, Barney, Bear in the Big Blue House, Arthur, Rugrats, Kim Possible, Lilo & Stitch, and many, many, more, including Mr. Squarepants. According to the We Are Family Foundation, the purpose of the video is:

to promote tolerance and diversity to America's children. The video, which demonstrates to children the importance of togetherness embodied in the word “family”, will be distributed to 61,000 public and private elementary schools in the United States on March 11, 2005, in celebration of the proposed National We Are Family Day.

The problem Dr. Dobson has with the video?

While some of the goals associated with this organization are noble in nature, their inclusion of the reference to "sexual identity" within their "tolerance pledge" is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line.

Okay, so let's take a look at the Tolerance Pledge in question. In part, it says:

To help keep diversity a wellspring of strength and make America a better place for all, I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own.

With all due respect to Dr. Dobson, what's the problem here? This isn't promoting a "homosexual agenda" and it isn't saying you have to agree with gay people or accept their lifestyle as moral. It simply says you will treat people who are different with respect. Why is that a bad thing?

In looking into this a little deeper, the real problem is that this all started over a mistake. It seems that there is another organization called We Are Family that is specifically a gay/lesbian advocacy group. World Net Daily posted an article that originally stated, "While the video is not specifically about homosexuality, it's producer, the We Are Family Foundation, has the primary purpose of 'fighting homophobia,' according to its website." Clearly this refers to the wrong organization! World Net Daily has since updated the article with a reference to the correct organization, but still, you have to wonder if the mistake hadn't been made in the first place, would the "Tolerance Pledge" be enough to bring out the wrath of Focus on the Family? Is it all just a mistake for which they refuse to apologize, or is that "Tolerance Pledge" something they really see as an insidious threat to children? Since when did respect, even with people we don't agree with, become such a bad thing to teach children?

As for the video itself? It's completely innocuous. Lots of favorites from children's shows singing about being family. Not a hint of anything remotely connected to sexual orientation. You can view the actual video here, but you do have to wade through a biased commentary from MSNBC first.

Then again, maybe Dr. Dobson is right. SpongeBob is pretty scary. That whole "living in a pineapple under the sea" lifestyle? It's just so... wrong.