A recent report by Entertainment Insider outlines the massive increase in LGBTQ content in children’s programming and explains that the people behind the scenes have been trying to make this happen for years, and are not stopping any time soon.
“The rise of gender-diverse representation isn’t a coincidence,” Insider reports. “Shows created and run by queer women, trans, and nonbinary showrunners are largely responsible for the influx of nonbinary and trans characters in kids’ animation.”
Organizations like GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, have been successful in convincing Hollywood to increase LGBTQ representation in media — specifically for children’s programming like Nickelodeon, PBS, and Cartoon Network.
In January, GLAAD released its annual “Where We Are on TV” report and found that things have been holding steady when it comes to the representation of LGBTQ characters on scripted series on broadcast networks. The group’s previous demands of representation have been met according to their annual report, and recently the group requested an increase to at least 25% representation in programming.
GLAAD was founded in 1985 and has tracked the presence of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) characters on television for more than 20 years.
According to their most recent report, among scripted characters on prime-time TV shows this season, more than 10% were LGBT—and a majority of those were women or people of color. Estimates of the percentage of Americans who identify as LGBT is only around 4%.
But GLAAD is not happy with this percentage, the group demanded last year that the TV industry more than double this number to 25% by 2025.
A tidal wave of gay representation has washed over children’s TV shows, with a 222 percent increase in LGBTQ characters and stories between 2017 and 2019 alone.
A review of the content found 259 gay characters in cartoons and TV series aimed at children, and today it is virtually impossible to find a TV show without a gay character or LGBTQ theme.
Recent reports outline several of these instances of major kids’ shows containing gay characters or storylines.
Last year, Disney revealed a gay character in the remake of DuckTales, and Discovery Family’s My Little Pony introduced a lesbian pony couple. In the same year, PBS’ Arthur featured a gay wedding scene in its season premiere.
Taneka Stotts, a “genderfluid” writer for Steven Universe told Insider that nonbinary creators like Rebecca Sugar “went out of the way” to make sure a show was staffed by so-called “inclusive” standards and that new hires were found on platforms like Twitter and Tumblr.
Trans showrunner, Shadi Petosky, told Insider that it isn’t enough for LGBTQ activists to simply get roles within the industry, they must also make sure that large amounts of pro-LGBTQ content populates the shows.
A book written in 1990 called ‘Life After the Ball’ outlined the agenda playing out today, and how America will “conquer its fear and hatred of gays.” The book suggests that the LGBTQ community must transform themselves into an ‘oppressed victim class’ in order to coerce the ‘straights’ into protecting them.
The book also talks about how the push for representation in TV and media is one of the most important steps in fulfilling their goals. The writer claimed that ‘straights’ are natural protectors and will eventually conform.
Today this plan appears to be going swimmingly.
Support for same-sex marriage in the U.S. has reached an all-time high of 70%, according to a poll released by Gallup.
The rise in support stems largely from a surge in support from Republicans, who for the first time approve of same-sex marriage at 55%, according to Gallup.
Just a few years ago the majority of Americans opposed gay marriage and even Barack Obama publicly opposed the idea. Today, the Washington Post is arguing that ‘kink’ belongs at pride parades and that children need to see it, and there are drag queens twerking in the face of kindergarteners.
According to the Washington Times, Chicago public schools recently announced that they would be handing out condoms to 5th graders.
The new policy will go into effect without parental consent, and their reasoning for the decision was because ‘society has changed.’
Incoming students will have access to 250 condoms per elementary school; high schools are required to have 1,000 on hand.
“I would expect that not everybody is going to be completely on board right from the start, but I do think society has changed,” CPS doctor Kenneth Fox said.
The term ‘slippery slope’ has been used by conservatives frequently to describe the rise in licentiousness and decline of sexual morality in American society, but a ‘moral current’ is a more accurate description.
What conservatives are opposed to today – trans kids, drag story hour, indoctrination on public access tv, and the in-your-face celebration of perversion every June – is a result of there being zero opposition to the starting point of the moral current. Today, it doesn’t seem to matter what the proponents of this agenda do – or how it affects the religious beliefs of other people – because they have obtained complete control of the moral current of the country.
In elementary and high schools across the country, teachers celebrate pride month in June, force Christian students to participate in the celebration, and shun any parent or student who dares to criticize their celebration.
Sexual perversion has become the religion of many irreligious Americans, yet the idea of ‘separation of church and state’ in schools does not seem to apply to them. Almost all types of religious ceremonies and symbols, have been banned at U.S. public schools and most public buildings since 1962. However, pro-LGBTQ symbols and celebrations in schools are not only allowed, but they’re also almost obligatory.
Many conservatives believe that they can start their opposition in the middle of the current and that the flowing river has a finish line the morally broken will not cross. This line of thinking is flawed and extremely naive.
The current push will never end, the moral current will continue to flow, and the upcoming waterfall to society’s moral doom is still nowhere in sight. This also means though that it is not too late to reverse the course of the current back to its original direction.
Under the ‘police powers’ of the tenth amendment, it is clearly stated that the regulation of health, wellbeing, morality, and education of citizens is under the sole authority of the states. Police powers are the powers of a state government to make and enforce all laws necessary to preserve public health, safety, and the general welfare of the citizens of the country.
These powers originate from the English common law system, and when the Constitution was ratified in 1788, the states did not surrender their powers as a condition of creating the federal government. The federal government has very few actual powers, the states hold most of the power.
Republicans must stop drifting with the moral current of the world created by those who seek to destroy it and start changing the direction back to its original direction. They must start doing what is right simply because it is right, even in the face of fierce backlash.
The regulation of morality was a big part of America’s past time up until 1965. For most of American history, we have regulated the morality of citizens in some form or another. There were laws for sodomy and even cohabitation. For a long time even exposed breasts were banned from American tv. The Hays Code specifically, tried to stamp out all lust and licentiousness in American film.
Republican states have made steps in the right direction and may eventually become the true opposition to the moral decay of society we elected them to be. For example, certain Republican-controlled states trans athletes in women’s sports. Some states have even banned puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transitional surgery for minors.
The trajectory appears to be moving in a positive direction, but this is not nearly far enough.
Pornography and Obscenity Laws
Recent studies indicate 90 percent of teens have viewed porn online, and 10 percent admit to daily use. This is due to increased smartphone usage among children and adolescents, with elementary-age smartphone ownership rising to over 50 percent in recent years. Ten years ago, just a small percentage of teens viewed porn intentionally or accidentally each year, according to the American Psychological Association (APA). According to studies, kids as young as 5 are starting to watch porn.
Republican state legislators must be willing to address this public health crisis by mandating pornography websites require consumers to show some form of age verification to be able to access the website within their states. If you have to verify your age to buy a magazine, cigarettes, or enter an adult bar, you should have to for digital pornography as well.
Ban Drag Story Hour in Public Libraries and Public Schools
In a string of incidents in Texas and other states, Drag queens who have been invited to perform sexually provocative dances in front of children, have been found out only later to have a criminal history of sexually abusing children. This practice is putting kids at risk, and it is being paid for by the taxpaying citizens of the state.
Taxpayers in republican controlled states should not have to pay for this, and Republicans must move to ban this practice in public libraries and schools in states they control
Obergefell v Hodges and Gay Marriage
Kimberly Davis was a former county clerk for Rowan County, Kentucky, who gained international attention in August 2015 when she defied a U.S. federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Davis was elected Rowan County Clerk in 2014. The following year, the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges, and all county clerks in Kentucky were ordered to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Citing personal religious objections to same-sex marriage, Davis began denying marriage licenses to all couples to avoid issuing them to same-sex couples. A lawsuit, Miller v. Davis, was filed, and Davis was ordered by the U.S. District Court to start issuing marriage licenses. She appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the application to appeal was denied.
Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito recently blasted the high court’s 2015 same-sex marriage decision, when the court declined to hear a case brought by the former Kentucky county clerk. Alito and Thomas agreed with the decision not to hear the case but used the occasion to take a legal baseball bat to the court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.
Thomas said that the court’s decision “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.”
“Davis may have been one of the first victims of this court’s cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision,” Thomas and Alito wrote. But they agreed that the court properly decided not to take up Davis’ case because, they said, it does not “cleanly” present the issues in the court’s 5-4 decision five years ago. Nevertheless, they said, the case “provides a stark reminder” of the consequences of the same-sex marriage decision. By choosing to endorse “a novel constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the court has created a problem that only it can fix,” they said. “Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”
Just as Republicans aim to do with gun rights and Roe v Wade, Republican state legislators should be pushing to pass laws within their states that they control, to force a new decision on the disaster that was Obergefell v Hodges.
You cannot be a conservative and be in favor of the decision in Obergefell v Hodges. The fact that conservatives do not even understand why this is, is why we are here in the first place. Why what some call the ‘slippery slope’ of deviant has become more and more slippery. Republicans should not label themselves “conservative” if they’re just living within the left’s moral framing of the world, and unwilling to understand conservatism or conserve anything of value at all.
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