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Popular kids show banned after featuring gay wedding.

Last week we shared how people were praising long running TV series, Arthur, the popular children’s animated show, for featuring a gay wedding.

In the long loved series, Mr. Nigel Ratburn has been an elementary school teacher for the animated characters, but his sexual orientation was never mentioned.

The series premiere titled Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone featured Mr. Ratburn getting married to another man — and Twitter was loving the plot decision.

Viewers watched Mr. Ratburn happily walk down the aisle with a groom on his arm, as the two men prepared to get married.

The groom in question was a man named Patrick and owned a chocolate shop in the fictional town.

Later in the episode characters Muffy, Arthur and Buster discussed the wedding and seeing their teacher happy with his new husband.

Buster is then heard saying, ‘It’s a brand new world,’ hinting at how society has changed to be more accepting of people’s sexual orientation and ability to get married.

Praise for the inclusive episode

The heartwarming episode was well received by viewers who praised PBS on Twitter for incorporating a gay character into the children’s show.

‘Welcome out and congratulations Mr. Ratburn,’ one person tweeted.

Another person wrote: ‘PSA: Mr. Ratburn from “Arthur” is gay. Do you know how amazing it is that someone who’s been on the show from the start, someone who’s a main character, is openly gay and getting married on a kids show? PBS Kids really is that b****. Plus, all his students are at his wedding!’

Sadly it seems not everyone was impressed

One TV network has chosen not to air the episode of children’s show Arthur because it included a same-sex wedding.

Alabama Public Television (APT) instead showed a re-run of the PBS show.
Mike Mckenzie, director of programming at APT, defended the decision.

“Parents have trusted Alabama Public Television for more than 50 years to provide children’s programs that entertain, educate and inspire,” he said in a statement to AL.com.

“More importantly – although we strongly encourage parents to watch television with their children and talk about what they have learned afterwards – parents trust that their children can watch APT without their supervision.”

The station had previously pulled an episode of Arthur in 2005 when a character had two mothers.

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  • I know there’s lots of things in today’s world that our kids come in contact with. But do we really need to include it all in their cartoons? Are kids who are young enough to be watching this cartoon, old enough to feel understanding what they’re watching???

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  • Don’t get the whole ‘coming out congratulations’ thing, we are who we are why does it need to be announced to great praise? As far as the cartoon, don’t know. To me cartoons are just fun, colourful and musical.

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  • Love it. I dont understand why people cant accept it its 2019.

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  • Such small minded people!!! Imagine if they used their time to help stop actually bad things like poverty, peadopholia, rape, murder etc ????

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  • Would the kids even have noticed

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  • It’s great that kids who are gay or have gay parents will see people like them represented on tv as normal. I wonder how the parents who want to “protect” their kids from this think they’re going to protect them from the fact that gay people, and even same sex marriages are things that exist in the real world.

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  • Oh good grief. Kids don’t even take a lot of notice of these kinds of things. And of course it had to be Alabama that banned it!!!

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  • Oh good grief. That’s very sad considering the times we live in now.


    • It is indeed sad and being inclusive is so important.

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  • I think parents, not TV networks, should be making that decision.


    • Yes. If people don’t want their kids to watch it they can just turn it off.

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  • Good on this cartoon. This is reality and its happening around us.

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  • Ridiculous!
    Why does it matter about a same sex marriage – love is love and marriage is between people that love each other.
    A sad move by the network.

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  • Why did they do that? Why do they close their eyes in front of these changes in society? :-(

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  • What do you expect from a state where a bunch of old ben decide to ban abortion.

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  • Whatever your thoughts are about gay weddings, a program like this could be a great tool to answer question or have a talk about it. In the same way chats about sexuality at an early age can be positive, open and far more easy then holding these conversations off.

    Reply

  • I don’t think young children need to deal with the topic of same sex marriage. Let kids show be for entertainment and fun, keep the heavy topics til they’re older

    Reply

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