Name: The Arthur gay wedding.
Age: It happened on 13 May.
Appearance: Animated.
You mean that Arthur, the lovable, bespectacled cartoon aardvark of children’s TV, finally got married? No. Although the cartoon series started in 1996, Arthur will for ever be eight years old.
So who is having the gay wedding? Arthur’s third-grade teacher, Mr Ratburn.
Mr Ratburn is gay? As of season 22 he is. He married his boyfriend Patrick in the recently aired episode.
Is Patrick a rat too? No, he’s an aardvark. And a chocolatier.
Sweet. It’s nice that kids can learn about the love between a rodent and a member of the obscure mammalian order Tubulidentata. Yeah. Except in Alabama.
Why? Don’t they have TVs in Alabama? They do, but Alabama Public Television (APT) refused to screen the episode. It showed a repeat instead.
What reason was given for not broadcasting it? The director of programming, Mike McKenzie, said it would be “a violation of trust”.
In what sense? “Although we strongly encourage parents to watch television with their children and talk about what they have learned afterwards,” he said in a statement, “parents trust that their children can watch APT without their supervision.”
That’s no explanation. Get to the part where he says rats can’t be gay. McKenzie went on to say: “We also know that children who are younger than the target audience for Arthur also watch the program.”
The target audience for Arthur is children aged four to eight. What does he think will happen if a three-year-old sees a cartoon animal wedding? He was not entirely clear on this point.
Alabama does have a knack for embarrassing itself – first a bunch of men pass the US’s strictest abortion ban, and now this. It’s not even the first time. APT also refused to screen an episode of Arthur in 2005 when Buster (a bunny) met a girl with two mums. But back then, the station wasn’t alone.
Are they alone now? The perpetually hyperventilating evangelical pressure group One Million Moms (membership: nowhere near one million) also launched a petition calling for a network boycott.
What did it have to say about it? The group is worried the episode will “further normalise” same-sex marriage.
I would have thought that was the whole point. Exactly – job done, outside Alabama.
Do say: “Congratulations, Mr Ratburn and Patrick!”
Don’t say: “I’ve been married three times, and they all turned out to be rats.”
