The children’s show got a little more inclusive back in September, introducing a young polar bear character who has two polar bear moms.
“I live with my mummy and my mother mummy,” young Penny says, drawing a picture of her family. “One mummy is a doctor and one mummy cooks spaghetti. I love spaghetti.”
Now, two months later, conservatives have gotten wind of the inclusion and are demanding the show stop the “normalization of a sinful lifestyle choice.”
“This type of sexuality should never be included in a cartoon designed for children,” they wrote.
Whether homophobes like it or not, there are plenty of children in this world being raised by same-sex couples. They don’t have a choice in the matter, just like LGBTQ+ children don’t have a choice when they end up being raised by heterosexual parents — or straight up homophobes.
Including a family that looks like theirs in a kids’ program is far from the end of the world. There’s nothing sexual about it. They can scream about pushing an agenda all day long, although reflecting the world as it exists hardly seems to qualify. The only purpose this type of inclusion really serves is allowing children with same-sex parents to feel included, and, yes, to normalize it with other children so that they don’t treat it as strange.
Of course, that’s exactly what One Million Moms doesn’t want to happen, and why bills like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” work so tirelessly to prevent children from hearing about same-sex families in schools. Peppa Pig isn’t going to make kids gay, but it could make them kinder to kids who are, or whose parents are, and to homophobic bullies, there’s not much scarier than that.
