Alabama church decides to host screening of banned Arthur episode featuring same-sex marriage
Source: Think Progress
After Alabama Public Television decided not to air an episode of the children’s television show Arthur that featured a same-sex marriage, a Birmingham church said it planned to hold its own screening. The First United Methodist Church will hold the screening on June 15 and plans to serve wedding cake and sparkling apple juice to celebrate the union of the show’s characters, Mr. Ratburn, Arthur’s teacher, and Patrick, a chocolatier.
In May, the director of programming at Alabama Public Television (APT), Mike McKenzie said in a statement to media that it would be a “violation of trust to broadcast the episode” because the “vast majority of parents will not have heard about the content, whether they agree with it or not.”
APT showed an Arthur rerun instead of the episode, “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone.” The episode begins with Mr. Ratburn’s students becoming concerned that he was marrying the wrong person after they heard him having difficult conversations with a woman on the phone about wedding plans. They try to stop the marriage but realize later that it was Mr. Ratburn’s sister he was talking to, and that he was about to marry a nice man instead.
APT also refused to air an episode that was a spinoff of Arthur called “Postcards From Buster.” The episode showed a queer female couple parenting one of Buster’s friends. Their daughter refers to them as her mother and stepmother and Buster says, “That’s a lot of moms!”
Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/alabama-methodist-church-host-screening-banned-arthur-episode-with-same-sex-marriage-dfb31a70091d/
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