I agree with you that attacking SpongeBob is stupid. My daughters and I are big fans of the yellow one.
I also think that if all kids are seeing is a bunch of cartoon characters singing “We Are Family,” this whole Dobson/AFA campaign is ludicrous.

Don’t spar with a fictional character - you are arguing with something that doesn’t exist.
They are not real, and exist in a place that defies time - like trying to outswim Flipper.
Bad idea.
We like fictional characters because they aren’t real. Attempting reason and politics against them doesn’t work. In other words, don’t spar with a sponge.

I think attacking the video is foolish, I think seeing the intent of the company that made it, makes the reaction even more foolish.

I have great respect for anyone who parents, it is by far the most important job you’ll ever have. To love and teach a child, to bring them safely through the developmental stages of their lives is a profound task. To teach them to think, discern, chose and to find their place in the larger world is a immensely important.

Where we might diverge in our belief is in seeing ‘a culture war.’ Of course when a child steps out your door, they will face different ideology. Starts at least at pre-school and never stops. I freely admit I don’t understand the fear of…where parents burdened and frightened and tired and stressed, see life as a seige on their souls and the souls of their children.

My main objection is on two fronts:
a) That Dobson and co. are overreacting, creating backlash to things that aren’t happening, and thereby compromising their own credibility and making evangelicals look like knee-jerk morons.
b) That the anti-Dobson folks think objecting to school kids pledging to respect different sexual identities means Dobson and co. (and evangelicals) are homophobic bigots.

You and I probably disagree on the “politics of homosexuality,” but I sympathize with the concerns for what values our kids are being taught in schools. Heck, I thought it was the family’s job to teach values. When the schools get involved, they’re likely to infringe on someone’s ideology. That it’s usually conservative Christians’ ideology seems not to matter much to “the powers that be.”

But I’m trying to maintain an informed, as-neutral-as-can-be middle position here. I don’t like the idea of kids even pondering the notion of different “sexual identities,” much less pledging to respect them. But if that’s not even happening, Dobson needs to get his facts straight.
Falwell/Robertson/et. al. don’t need any help making evangelicals look stupid.

I forgot to add the link to the American Family Foundation. I’ve added it. And I added the video is going to schools with the teaching material.

I added the link to the site promoting material sent to the schools from the Southern Poverty Law Center. They deal with race, gender, immigration. religion, intergenerational, health, and sexual identity.

They are throwing the proverbial baby out with the bathwater Jared.

I need to look around and see if the original premise of mixing up the WeAreFamily organizations stands. I’ll correct with an update if I’m wrong. Thanks for your help on this.

But a minor correction:
The main beef these folks are having is that the “We Are Family” program sent to schools is accompanied by a tolerance pledge for kids to learn and recite. In that pledge is a clause about respecting different “sexual identities.” Whatever you think about such an idea, it is understandable, to me at least, that the Focus contingent might not want their kids to be pledging to do things antithetical to their particular family’s values.

I don’t think there is confusion between the video and that organization you mentioned, but I could be wrong. I hadn’t heard that yet. I think it’s because of the tolerance pledge that is part of the video program.

Oh, right, it involves the public school system, bastion of liberal indoctrination.

I just can’t imagine living my faith in such an angry fashion. I think my soul would just shrivel up from the bitterness, like my tongue retracts from a lemon slice.