When the Religious Right made a Big Deal that SpongeBob Pants was gay or was advancing the "Gay Agenda" I didn't pay much attention. First, my kids were grown and I didn't have the faintest idea who SpongeBob Pants was (actually I still don't). Second, the whole thing was just too ridiculous for words:
xIn a new video [2005] to be distributed to 61,000 schools across the nation, homosexual activists are using popular children's TV characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Barney the dinosaur to surreptitiously indoctrinate young children into their lifestyle, a pro-family activist group charges.The distribution, sponsored by FedEx, will coincide with the video's broadcast March 11 on Nickelodeon, PBS, and the Disney Channel in celebration of the proposed National We Are Family Day.
AFA researcher Ed Vitagliano sees the project as an "open door" to a secondary discussion of homosexuality, noting the the foundation has a "tolerance pledge" on it's website that children and others are encouraged to sign, which includes sexual orientation.
"While we want everyone to respect other people's beliefs, we do not consider it appropriate for children's television to be used in an effort to indoctrinate children to accept homosexuality," he said.
Vitagliano says the foundation is employing a bait-and-switch approach, with popular children's figures such as Arthur, Dora the Explorer, JoJo, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Big Bird and Bob the Builder.
The objective is to get children to the foundation's website "and there they're given the full pitch about homosexuality," he said.
(from the Jesus is Savior Website/America/Sodomy subsection via World Net Daily [the Moonies])
Laughable. Except.
It appears that SpongeBob himself (itself?) might be gay, or at least wants to sodomize our children:
I was shopping at the supermarket yesterday when I came upon a unique piece of Nickelodeon merchandising - a Spongebob Squarepants Musical Rectal Thermometer! Yes, it's musical. And yes, it's clearly marked for rectal use. It actually plays the Spongebob theme in your ass when your temperature is taken! (Cartoon Brew)
Here's the visual evidence:
Still laughable. Who cares? Which got me thinking about two events in the last couple of weeks. One was the death of Mildred Loving at the relatively young age of 68. Mildred and Richard Loving were the principals in the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, the decision which struck down the nation's anti-miscegenation laws. Mildred was black, Richard was white. They were married in Washington, DC but moved to nearby Virginia:
By their own widely reported accounts, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point in the early morning of July 11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bedroom and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, "Who is this woman you're sleeping with?"
Mrs. Loving answered, "I'm his wife."
Mr. Loving pointed to the couple's marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, "That's no good here."
The certificate was from Washington, D.C., and under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia. At the time, it was one of 16 states that barred marriages between races.
After Mr. Loving spent a night in jail and his wife several more, the couple pleaded guilty to violating the Virginia law, the Racial Integrity Act. Under a plea bargain, their one-year prison sentences were suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia and not return together or at the same time for 25 years. (New York Times)
That was just 40 years ago. I was graduating medical school. Now the dominant view about this is, "Who cares?" The idea of people of different races who love each other and marry seems quite natural to most people (not everyone, I'll grant you, but not everyone believes in evolution, either).
The second event came last week when the California Supreme Court declared laws preventing same sex marriage in that state invalid under the California constitution. When Massachusetts courts did this just two years ago there was an uproar. It's still a big deal, insofar was only two states out of fifty allow same sex marriage, but one can already feel the air going out of the anti gay marriage balloon. In another forty years, if people even remember such unions were illegal (most people probably never heard of anti-miscegenation laws, for example), they will probably be baffled or amused by it. They'll wonder, "Who cares?"
Of course if you are one of the people working yourself up into a fever about this, I suggest you go out and get yourself a SpongeBob Pants thermometer. You know what you can do with it.
- Log in to post comments
Sponge Bob appears to be rather *ahem* well-endowed.
Sponge Bob's last name is Square Pants. :)
Tee hee! Well played, Revere.
Even in Massachusetts, there were proposed ballot amendments to amend the Commonwealth's constitution, and some chance one might pass. But the proposed amendment that would have retroactively invalidated the marriages between same-sex couples that had already taken place was rejected by the legislature 196-0.
As I commented at the time, once you give people civil rights, taking them away looks like the barbarous, cruel act it is.
People should be reminded about the anti-miscegenation laws. It is important to understand how things were only a short 40 years ago and I would bet the same arguments used then against inter-racial marriages are not so much different than the arguments used now against same sex marriage.
That juxtaposition might cause some to begin to think that since we were wrong then, we might be wrong now.
Love it Joel, thank you for the clarity. Simple yet profound and something that resonates well with me.
The California Supreme Court declared laws preventing same sex marriage link you provided was great revere. I am suspect of the Who cares? thing though, tricky perhaps?
Still fond of you revere/Revere, whether you like it or not!
For anyone interested:
Did the California Supreme Court make the correct decision?
73.5 % Yes
26.5 % No
40899 total responses
It occurred to me today: Whenever America has acted to favor tradition at the expense of liberty, it's been a mistake.
At the founding, we ditched the tradition of monarchical rule, in favor of liberty. That worked well. But we kept the tradition of slavery, at the expense of the liberty of blacks. That didn't work out so well.
Now, if we could just convince the neocons that the plastics industry was trying to gayify their children by exposing them to hormone interupters we might have a win-win situation.
Just to set the record straight (as it were), Spongebob is actually asexual. But his best friend Patrick IS a pink starfish. Maybe HE is gay.
What's the difference between an oral thermometer and a rectal thermometer?
The rectal thermometer tastes like shit.
Oh man. Jerry Falwell's gay paranoia rises from his grave to examine our pubes once again.
Tinky Winky was bad enough. Then he went after Sponge Bob. We laughed, we pointed fingers (and sniffed them), and went on our way ignoring those Kooky Katholics.
But they can't let it go, can they?
Schroeder was definitely 'sensitive', he continually spurned Lucy's advances over the piano. Linus had inappropriate feelings for Miss Othmar. And as for Peppermint Patty...
I'm surprised America has turned out as well as it has given the blatant perverted propaganda you've been subjected to over the years.
Regardless of anything else, isn't the SpongeBob thermometer just a wee bit odd? It's the "I'm on my way up your ass with a big smile on my face"-ness that weirds me out.
"Regardless of anything else, isn't the SpongeBob thermometer just a wee bit odd? It's the "I'm on my way up your ass with a big smile on my face"-ness that weirds me out."
csrster, I understand where you're coming from; we as adults would see it a little bit differently though than a child getting his temperature taken. (but who takes them that way anymore?)If it is necessary to take it rectally though, while they might have thought "well this will distract the child while the temperature is being taken" it's not like the kid can turn around and see Sponge Bob's head bobbing up and down over their butt! (OMG, did I say that? No pun intended, believe me) Maybe that's what the music was for, to keep the child's attention, and make the whole thing a little easier for them.
What on earth would make anyone think that Sponge Bob is gay though? If anything he's just weird; after all, he's dated a krabby patty.... (my grandson has had me watching Sponge Bob since it started)
Pookie asks:
"What on earth would make anyone think that Sponge Bob is gay though? If anything he's just weird; after all, he's dated a krabby patty.... (my grandson has had me watching Sponge Bob since it started)"
That's easy. Sponge Bob isn't a masculine, musclebound, manly superhero who is blowing up stuff and beating down the bad guys. Any nominally male figure (Barney, SpongeBob, Bert, Ernie) is suspect if he doesn't fit some human manly prototype.
Which is really silly. First, these cartoon characters are generally viewed as being non-human, or young whatever-else-they-may-be. Second, well, it is just pretend! Good grief! Ernie takes baths with a rubber ducky and sleeps with a teddy bear, I think. Sponge Bob holds hands with his friend Patrick, but I think it is still ok for kids to hold hands. (Even our very masculine manly cowboy President holds hands with Saudi sheiks if it will get us lower gas prices. http://dohiyimir.typepad.com/bush-abdulah.jpg
Or maybe he just likes holding hands with men. Who knows?)
It wasn't so long ago that Barney was the darling of the religious authoritarians of the US. Barney was all for being good, listening to your elders and following rules. He only got in hot water when people found out it was actually a black man under that purple costume. I just couldn't stand the hideously over-acting children or insipid songs.
Ahem. We've had gay marriage in Canada for several years now, and so far, there haven't been any hints of the massive conversion to Sodom and Gomorrah, as feared by the Extreme Right. Not to say that there hasn't been terrible fallout... shortages in his and his and hers and hers cake toppers, longer lines for the registry price scanners at major department stores, difficulties in finding really good wedding cards... Not to mention, do you say wives? or is it partners? Or husbands? Dammit, it's opened a whole new can of etiquette! But ultimately, no one cares. We're just happy that people are in love. And that we get to do the chicken dance more often.
Man, I love that show. I guess it's easier for some Christians to fight cartoon characters than child hunger. Priorities, guys.