Shut up and sit down...

SpongeBob's Recruitment Drive?
by Joal Ryan
Jan 21, 2005, 1:15 PM PT


Barney, Big Bird and Clifford the Big Red Dog are in cahoots with reputedly flamboyant sea-creature SpongeBob SquarePants to promote the "pro-homosexual" agenda to children.

So goes the accusation by James C. Dobson, the popular radio commentator and founder of the conservative Christian group, Focus on the Family.

Addressing members of Congress at the "Values Victory Dinner" in Washington, D.C., Tuesday night, Dobson asked the power brokers, "Does anybody here know SpongeBob?"

Dobson went onto decry a toon-town remake of the 1979 Sister Sledge disco hit, "We Are Family," in which the frolicsome Bikini Bottom dweller appears alongside Barney, Big Bird, Clifford and other fictional stars of children's TV.

The music video, produced by the non-profit We Are Family Foundation, is to be distributed on DVD to 61,000 public and private elementary schools on March 11. Its stated aim is to promote diversity; its stated agenda is to have future March 11s declared National We Are Family Day.

But according to the New York Times' accounting of Dobson's remarks, what's unsaid is that the "We Are Family" project is a "pro-homosexual video."

Dobson based his charge on a "tolerance pledge" found on the We Are Family Foundation Website. The two-paragraph statement seeks "respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own."

"...Their inclusion of the reference to 'sexual identity' within their 'tolerance pledge' is not only unnecessary, but it crosses a moral line," a statement from Focus on the Family says.

To the Times, Paul Batura, an assistant to Dobson, was even more scathing: "We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids. It is a classic bait and switch."

An attorney for the We Are Family Foundation, Mark Barondess, labeled its critics "insane," per the New York Post.

The group, founded by music-industry veteran Nile Rodgers, who wrote "We Are Family" onto the charts, said the offending "tolerance pledge," which it stands behind, won't even be included in the DVD package mailed to schools.

Actor Tom Kenny, who gives high-pitched voice to SpongeBob, told his hometown newspaper, New York's Syracuse Post-Standard, that producers merely wanted to "make a video that [says] it's a positive, good thing to be respectful of people different from you."

"I could maybe see it their [critics'] way if this was a video with Barbra Streisand and Madonna and Judy Garland," Kenny told the Post-Standard.

While Focus on the Family insists it's not picking on SpongeBob ("...This issue is not about objections to any specific cartoon characters..."), it was SpongeBob, not Dora the Explorer, who was singled out by Dobson's speech.

"By picking SpongeBob, [Dobson's] going for the biggest name, the most recognizable one," says Alonso Duralde, deputy arts and entertainment editor of The Advocate, the gay and lesbian newsmagazine. "...It goes along with the religious rights' ongoing task of trying to make gay rights look awful by somehow suggesting that we're out to get the children."

In 1999, the Rev. Jerry Falwell warned followers that The Teletubbies' Tinky Winky was the same shade (purple) as "the gay pride color."

SpongeBob was outed by friendlier fire in a 2002 Wall Street Journal profile on the toon star's supposed status as a gay icon. At the time, Stephen Hillenburg, creator of the Nickelodeon series, said he thought of his characters as "being somewhat asexual." And rather than gay, Hillenburg described SpongeBob as "an oddball."

Mr. SquarePants also has been defined as "infectiously optimistic and carefree," interestingly enough in a largely positive review of The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie on the Focus on the Family Website.

SpongeBob controversy or no, Pamela Roberson, a spokeswoman for FedEx, one of the corporate partners on the "We Are Family" video, said Friday there had been no change in plans to take the DVD to schools.

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You know what it [The Torah/Bible] also says? It says a rebellious child can be brought to the city gates and stoned to death. It says homosexuality is an abomination and punishable by death. It says men can be polygamous and slavery is acceptable. For all I know, that thinking reflected the best wisdom of its time, but it’s just plain wrong by any modern standard. Society has a right to protect itself, but it doesn’t have a right to be vengeful. It has a right to punish, but it doesn’t have to kill. - Rabbi Glassman, Take This Sabbath Day, Season 1, Episode 14, The West Wing