Alabama Public Television is refusing to air an episode of a popular PBS children’s cartoon centered around a gay marriage.
Mike McKenzie, APT director of programming, told NBC News that the episode of “Arthur” that aired May 13 is not appropriate for unsupervised children.
“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. We also know that children who are younger than the ’target’ audience for ’Arthur’ also watch the program,” Mr. McKenzie said in a statement. “Because of this, we felt it would be a violation of trust to broadcast the episode.”
Mr. McKenzie added that APT couldn’t reasonably be expected to warn all parents who might not want to have the topic of homosexuality brought up in a child’s cartoon.
“The vast majority of parents will not have heard about the content, whether they agree with it or not,” he said. He said APTV showed a rerun of “Arthur” instead of the season-premiere episode “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone” and had no plans to air it in the future.
In the episode, Mr. Ratburn marries a chocolatier named Patrick, with the titular Arthur and several other third-grade pupils present.
The episode has been widely praised in the media and in coastal states while Alabama has been the target of boycott threats and “backward” insults from feminists and liberals over a newly passed law that would outlaw almost all abortions.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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