SpongeBob video promotes homosexuality
Gay warning on SpongeBob
Christian Conservative groups have issued a gay alert warning over a children's video starring SpongeBob SquarePants, Barney and a host of other cartoon favourites.
The wacky square and yellow SpongeBob is one of the stars of a music video due to be sent to 61,000 US schools in March.
The makers, the nonprofit We Are Family Foundation, say the video is designed to encourage tolerance and diversity.
But at least two Christian activist groups say the innocent cartoon characters are being exploited to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.
"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.
The video is a remake of the 1979 hit song We Are Family using the voices and images of SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, Bob the Builder, the Rugrats and 100 TV cartoon stars.
It was made by a foundation set up by songwriter Nile Rodgers after the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks to promote the nation's healing process.
AdvertisementChristian groups have taken exception to the tolerance pledge on the foundation's website, 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," Focus on the Family founder Dr James Dobson said today.
The attack has stunned Rodgers.
"That is so myopic and harsh," he told Reuters.
"You have really got to look hard to find anything in this that is offensive to anyone.
"The last thing I am going to do is taint these characters."
Dobson was quoted by the New York Times today as having singled out the wildly popular SpongeBob during remarks about the video at a Washington DC dinner this week.
SpongeBob, who lives in a pineapple under the sea, was "outed" by the US media in 2002 after reports that the TV show and its merchandise was popular with gays.
His creator, Stephen Hillenburg, said at the time that, although SpongeBob was an oddball, he thought of all the characters as asexual.
It is not the first time that children's TV favourites have come under the critical spotlight of the US Christian right.
Tinky Winky, the purse-toting purple Teletubbie, was in 1999 declared a homosexual role model by Reverend Jerry Falwell.
- Reuters
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