Scaring Our Children Straight        
Donna Sherman
Cartoon Homoeroticism

Children’s cartoons are causing concern amongst the more discerning of parents. Between the violence, offensive language, questionable morals, and careless treatment of religion, writers seem to think that viewers will simply not notice the homosexuality that runs rampant throughout our television screens. Recently, there has been talk of banning Spongebob Squarepants due to allegations of “more than friendship” between the titular character and one Patrick, a starfish.

Another television program that seems to have slipped past the censors is the popular children’s show Winnie the Pooh. The relationship between Pooh and Christopher Robin is clearly more than just that between a boy and his stuffed bear. On top of their obvious homosexual tendencies, Pooh and Christopher raise questions of the ethics of bestiality. What values are we teaching our children?!

Instead of encouraging this sort of behaviour, children’s shows need to demonstrate to our children the horrors of inappropriately close male friendships. This brings us to the issue of same-sex hugging.

This is a dangerous activity that can result in speaking in high falsetto, a nasty affliction that can cause mass earache in innocent bystanders.

Whatever happened to the good old days of Wile E. Coyote and his anvil of machismo? Bugs Bunny and the phallic imagery of his carrot? Yosemite Sam and his guns? These characters were not friends with anybody. They were independent and proud of it. We need to continue airing programming that gives our children feelings of invincibility – they need the self-confidence and reckless abandon that the cartoons of old afforded them. As things stand now, we are breeding a generation of thoughtful, sensitive, friendly boys, destroying the very foundations of what our society has been built on.

The brainwashing of viewers to accept the hugging, hand-shaking, close-sitting, deep-talking behaviours of male “friends” on children’s TV shows is destroying our country, one toddler at a time.

The future, however, is looking up. One thing we can personally thank Spongebob for is wearing pants and covering his cartoon shame, a courtesy that Donald Duck and indeed, Pooh himself, never afforded his viewers. –R