Alabama Can’t Handle ‘Arthur’ Episode with Mr. Ratburn’s Gay Marriage

The season 22 premiere of the kids’ animated series “Arthur” aired this week with an episode showing Mr. Ratburn, the third-grade teacher, marrying his male partner.

Alabama is upset about it.

Alabama Public Television (APT), the PBS affiliate that normally airs the show, refused to run the episode of Mr. Ratburn’s wedding and decided on an old rerun instead.

“Parents have trusted Alabama Public Television for more than 50 years to provide children’s programs that entertain, educate and inspire,” APT Director of Programming Mike McKenzie told AL.com. “More importantly – although we strongly encourage parents to watch television with their children and talk about what they have learned afterward – parents trust that their children can watch APT without their supervision. We also know that children who are younger than the ‘target’ audience for Arthur also watch the program… The vast majority of parents will not have heard about the content, whether they agree with it or not.”

So basically, APT thinks that kids are too young to know that gay people exist and can get married.

Conservatives lost their minds over the episode as well. One Million Moms created a petition saying that the episode “would glorify the homosexual lifestyle” and Sebastian Gorka, a former White House aide, and current talk radio host, said that the ‘Arthur’ episode was an example of “permanent revolution.”

“Civil society doesn’t exist, friendship doesn’t exist, family doesn’t exist — only permanent revolution,”  Gorka said on his radio show.

It’s doubtful that Mr. Ratburn was trying to be a part of the “permanent revolution.”

This isn’t the first time that APT has refused to air episodes of television shows with gay characters. In 2005, a show called “Postcards from Buster” had an episode about a girl with two moms. APT wouldn’t run that one either.

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