There’s a lot of great stuff on streaming services these days. As a connoisseur of life without cable, I’m here to (sometimes) guide you through what’s available from the 1990’s. Welcome to What’s Streaming?!?

Two things came to mind this week, when it was reported that the newest episode of Arthur, the animated children’s show on PBS, had the audacity to include a gay character on the program. One, Arthur is still on air? That’s fantastic, because I LOVED that show as a child, and the lessons I learned from it have resonated throughout my life (just like the theme song, which I can sing verbatim for anyone, anytime). When I was hit by a car at the age of 10, snapping my ankle and crushing my growth plate, I was gifted an Arthur stuffed animal, which I still own. Arthur Read was one of my favorite characters as a child, and still is as an adult.
But, secondly, I was appalled, at the gall of the gay agenda, working overtime to convert our nation’s children to their cause. Because being exposed to same-sex relationships as a child doesn’t simply allow children to recognize that LGBTQ people exist in the world (and there’s no reason to fear or worry about those individuals, because they’re just people trying their best to live their lives). Allowing children to learn, during their formative years, that there’s a vast variety of people and families than what they see in front of them, won’t just enable them to become teens and adults who are open-minded and accepting of those who are different (and suppressed, as a result of their inherent differences). It’s an effort to make the children gay, full stop. How do I know this? Because it happened to me!
When I was 9, my parents wanted to see The Birdcage (streaming now on Hulu) in theaters, but, according to them, they couldn’t find a babysitter; a likely story, indeed. So the solution to this problem, by my open-minded and progressive parents a.k.a. members of the special ops forces for gay conversion, was to bring me with them and indoctrinate the hell out of my young, impressionable mind. That evening, a new world was opened up for me, and a metamorphosis occurred, as the film’s creators clearly had in mind: I was turned into a gay. The homosexual lifestyle was just too alluring, the flamboyance on display too damn enticing to avoid. So, a couple of months before my tenth birthday, it was clear: the gays had won, and I was decidedly on their team.
This isn’t any different from what’s happening with our nation’s youth today, during the most recent season premiere of Arthur. Mr. Ratburn, the beloved, longtime grade school teacher of our favorite aardvark and his friends, gets married. Not just married, but MARRIED TO A MAN! And the show acts like this is no big deal? Please, people, this is just another in the interminably long line of gay propaganda, bombarding our good, Jesus-loving children with the lies that Big Homosexual are pushing. Trust me, it worked on me, and it’ll work on the kids today, as well. We’ll have a nation of Kurt Hummels running around, belting out show tunes and dancing in the streets before the 2020 election.
Nevermind the fact that the episode, literally, couldn’t have drawn less attention to the fact that Mr. Ratburn was marrying his soon-to-be husband; this is an all-out assault on our good, wholesome, Christian values. God created Adam and Eve, after all, not Adam and STEVE. Do you not remember the Bible, and all the times Jesus denounced homosexuality as a sin, all those passages where God notes that fags will burn in hell? (You don’t, because those passages don’t exist, you’re telling me? Uh…) It’s a proven fact, that being gay is a sin, and a choice made by those sad individuals who have come under the devil’s wicked power.
Perhaps I’m being dramatic, just like numerous individuals out there seem to be, given that, again, the episode barely acknowledges that the wedding is between two men. Seriously, it’s not discussed or confirmed verbally, at all, during the episode. Mr. Ratburn is simply shown walking down the aisle, arm in arm with his future husband, and Arthur and his friends react in shock that their teacher is marrying a NICE person, rather than his bossy, domineering sister (voiced by Jane Lynch), who they all assumed was his betrothed. The surprise and discomfort for the children stems from the fact that their teacher has a personal life outside of school, not that a gay wedding is occuring.
After the ceremony, Arthur and the gang are disgusted by Mr. Ratburn and his husband’s dance moves, not by anyone’s personal sexual preferences. Quite honestly, the most bizarre and disconcerting portion of the plot is that the kids and their families are invited to their teacher’s wedding in the first place, not that it’s a “non-traditional” marriage. The episode preaches acceptance (without actually preaching), like most of the show’s overall messaging. An acceptance of those who are different from you, and that there’s more to the people we interact with on a daily basis that just those direct interactions.
So maybe any concern raised over the newest Arthur’s plot is completely unnecessary and massively overblown. But I’m not lying when I say I was turned, at age 9, by viewing The Birdcage on the big screen at the old Route 3 Movie theater in Chelmsford. I was turned…into a lover of that film! It’s one of my most cherished memories, guffawing non-stop throughout with my parents, each of whom adored the movie as well. The clash of the ultra-flamboyant lives of Nathan Lane and Robin Williams’ characters, with the buttoned-up, super-conservative ways of Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest, is fantastic. But rather than me explaining why the movie is so damn funny, maybe just go watch it? I promise it won’t turn you or anyone else gay; it’ll just make you smile.