# Nickelodeon special on gay parents: Would you let your kids watch? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 18, 2002, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696 "2002-06-18T15:22:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/241 "2002-06-25T04:08:07Z")
> [@](#): > > I do, however, judge people’s actions and beliefs according to mine. If a person is doing something that I feel my child should not be exposed to, then she won’t. Period. That doesn’t mean I think they’re bad people. It doesn’t mean I tell her to throw rocks at them or that I beat them up when I get the chance. It means that I’m taking responsibility for raising a child the way I think sheh should be raised, and that’s it. > > Reading more into it and telling me what a hateful person I am just makes the discussion unpleasant and gets us all warned by the moderators. If a friend of yours who allows your child into his home made it a point to forbid his child from entering your house, would you feel like he respected you? Wouldn’t you feel offended, and even a bit diminished? Would you even call him a friend? I’m sure most agree that you should protect your child from certain things, but we disagree that gays deserve the level of disrespect you give them. Would you just as fervently forbid your daughter from entering the home of a Hindi girl’s parents, or a Democrat’s (or if you’re Democrat: Republican)? There are some things that are patently destructive (drug abuse, theft, other criminal activities) and some things you just won’t agree with, and you can’t have a functioning society in a country as diverse as America if you treat both with equal scorn. You don’t have to explicitly tell your daughter to throw rocks at gays, forbiding her to enter their homes sends a strong enough message. What else message could she possibly get other than “they are bad should be shunned”. Being gay isn’t inherently destructive or criminal, and gays are functioning members of society like everyone else, so why shouldn’t your daughter learn to respect them while disagreeing with them? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/242 "2002-06-25T04:31:36Z")
I’m always amazed at the power that those who “disagree”\* with homosexuality attribute to it. Apparently, it’s so much more fun and enjoyable to be gay that the average straight person will throw off their heterosexuality like an itchy sweater within mere minutes of experiencing close personal contact with a gay person. Because, really, if the fear isn’t that one’s child will “turn gay”, then what possible reason is there to prevent him/her seeing a happy, loving same-sex couple? Even if she were to think, because of her friendship with the child’s gay parents, that homosexuality is not sinful, how does that affect her in any way if she isn’t going to **do** homosexual acts when she does become sexually active? And that’s the real fear, isn’t it? When you live with the belief that homosexuality is something that otherwise “normal” people choose to do, you have to fear that either yourself or your children will be tempted to so choose. Sad life, innit? - this is kind of like disagreeing with rain or Tuesday, isn’t it? jayjay ---
**Author:** ![musicguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@musicguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/musicguy)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/243 "2002-06-25T04:55:51Z")
Yes, **jayjay** , that is exactly what it boils down to. Excellent post! And just to add, what happens then when someone such as this finds out that they have a gay child? Is that child going to be thrown out on the streets or forced to go through “conversion therapy”? Because the fact is, you can do your hardest to instill your personal set of morals into your child. They still may end up gay. What then? Are they suddenly “bad”? ---
**Author:** ![Sterra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8c91f0/32.png) [@Sterra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterra)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/244 "2002-06-25T06:17:56Z")
> [@](#): > > Would you all feel better if my comparison was to lawyers and stock brokers? The point is that the Bible says it’s a sin. So I compared it to other sins where the people might not think they’re doing anything wrong. I’ve never seen it say anywhere in the bible that two guys being a couple is a sin. Reading more into it and assuming that they have sex is just like gay people assuming your hateful because of your opinions on homosexuality. ---
**Author:** ![Esprix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprix/32/7899_2.png) [@Esprix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprix)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/245 "2002-06-25T16:30:57Z")
**jayjay** , you’re my hero of the day. Esprix ---
**Author:** ![vanilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f19dbf/32.png) [@vanilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vanilla)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/246 "2002-06-25T20:09:41Z")
ALL sex outside of marriage is a sin. Yes, i am teaching that to my son, like Jersey, who also knows; unlike some uninformed people, that God does exist, and isn’t a “sky fairy”(though you have a surprise coming someday when you meet him face to face Kirk). No, I don’t “discriminate” nor would my son. People are all different, gays are not weird or dangerous. I believe there should be any kind of information shows on tv as possible. Freedom of speech and all. heck, my son watches and likes the Osbournes, though I may be the only fundie whose child does. My two cents. ---
**Author:** ![More\_Cowbell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5a626/32.png) [@More\_Cowbell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/More_Cowbell)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/247 "2002-06-25T21:24:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by vanilla \* > \*\*ALL sex outside of marriage is a sin. > \*\* Biblical cite please. Also, does it describe what constitutes a valid marriage, such as performed today in a church between a man and a woman and administered by a priest? ---
**Author:** ![MrVisible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@MrVisible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrVisible)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/248 "2002-06-25T22:41:40Z")
And our Catch-22 Hypocrisy of the Day award goes to Vanilla, for reiterating the classic “All sex outside of marriage is sin, and you can’t get married!” political platform. Please accept this lovely certificate, this solid gold bible, and a stern talking-to from a flabbergasted, yet merciful, creator. ---
**Author:** ![Esprix](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/esprix/32/7899_2.png) [@Esprix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esprix)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2002, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/249 "2002-06-25T23:12:30Z")
IIRC, **vanilla** supports gay marriage for that very reason - yes? Correct me if I’m wrong, dear… Esprix ---
**Author:** ![vanilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f19dbf/32.png) [@vanilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vanilla)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/250 "2002-06-26T00:43:25Z")
Thunder, Yes, a marriage is legal if performed by a justice of the peace. Esprix: yes, you do remember correctly. i support gay marriage. ---
**Author:** ![MrVisible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@MrVisible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrVisible)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/251 "2002-06-26T04:55:16Z")
My sincere apologies, **Vanilla**. I’m a little gunshy about that particular phrase, after having been beaten with it frequently. I appreciate the fact that you support gay marriage, and I hope that my smarmy little outburst hasn’t in any way swayed you from that position. I will now go off and type “I will not make assumptions about people’s political stances based on their religious beliefs” 500 times. Though I may cut and paste a little bit. ---
**Author:** ![Kirkland1244](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dc4da7/32.png) [@Kirkland1244](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kirkland1244)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/252 "2002-06-26T06:15:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by vanilla \* > **ALL sex outside of marriage is a sin. > Yes, i am teaching that to my son, like Jersey, who also knows; unlike some uninformed people, that God does exist, and isn’t a “sky fairy”(though you have a surprise coming someday when you meet him face to face Kirk).** You fool. I adamantly believe in God, am a pretty-much weekly churchgoer, so on and so forth. I never said God doesn’t exist. But the hate imp sky pixie worshipped by Southern Baptists and other pseudo-Christians most certainly doesn’t exist. And if he did, I would not worship him, I wouldn’t even bother to spit in his vile face. Better to be in Hell than to worship any God the Southern Baptists throw their idolatrous lies skyward for. Kirk ---
**Author:** ![musicguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@musicguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/musicguy)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/253 "2002-06-26T15:48:48Z")
**kirkland** , Any chance you might be able to leave your personal issues with Southern Babtists out of this thread? Just asking because it would be really cool to keep this on topic without all of the name calling. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/254 "2002-06-26T17:22:16Z")
Hmmm… **Mr V** , contemplate the following: For a Christian (and I am generalizing), **any** act is to be done in accordance with God’s will, or else it’s sinful. For me to do anything but post the exactly-right response to you (which could of course include the null set of not responding) would be a sin. In that context, many Christians believe that any sex outside a committed relationship (=marriage) is sinful – not necessarily that it’s a major offense against God’s written-on-parchment laws, but that it’s falling short of the proper use of one’s sexuality in the context of how God expects one to arrange one’s life. For many of us, the idea that there may be two men or two women who love each other and desire a lifelong covenanted relationship including a healthy sex life is no different from the same view about heterosexuals – but the idea of more casual sex might be. Others ( **Jersey** and **Joe Cool** being examples) tend to see the O.T. Law and Paul’s strictures on “homosexuals being excluded from the company of the righteous” as forbidding any sexual activity in company with someone of one’s own sex, regardless of the nature of the relationship. Personally, I think that either Paul was condemning casual sex and had no idea that a marriage-like relationship between gay people was possible, or he was, like many moralists since, drawing lines between who was entitled to God’s grace and who was not – in direct contravention of Jesus’s own teachings. However, that’s merely my own opinion. I can respect **Jersey** and **Joe** ’s arguments as based on the traditional understanding of Scripture at the same time as I see them as being used to place you in a damned-if-you-do-and-damned-if-you-don’t position – quite literally, in this case! Me, I’m inclined to trust in His mercy – for some reason of His own, He saw fit to save me, sinful as I am, and I believe He is inclined to love all men and women, regardless of what others may think of them and their behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/255 "2002-06-26T17:49:53Z")
[Moderator Hat ON] Kirkland, **do not** call people names in this forum. [Moderator Hat OFF] ---
**Author:** ![Kirkland1244](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dc4da7/32.png) [@Kirkland1244](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kirkland1244)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/256 "2002-06-26T18:24:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by musicguy \* > \*\*Any chance you might be able to leave your personal issues with Southern Babtists out of this thread? \*\* Sure. Just as soon as they and the Pixie-worshipping fundies they work with stop working day and night to deny people like me safety and equality, and stop pushing the lie that they speak for a God they will never know. ---
**Author:** ![musicguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ba0ec/32.png) [@musicguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/musicguy)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/257 "2002-06-26T18:28:16Z")
glad we got that cleared up. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/258 "2002-06-26T18:33:04Z")
on a practical note, **KIrkland** your stance/reply to **musicguys’** request has a couple of problems - A. It allowed you to completely gloss over the admonition by the Administrator, (or perhaps you emailed instead, in which case I withdraw this objection). B. It smacks of ‘well, they did it first and they’re worser than me and and and and’, which kinda detracts from any positive argument that you make. C. By focusing on people who are less likely to change their opinion and without being able to reign yourself in from the insults and so on, you risk not only banning here (personal insults in GD are not permitted), it also allows folks of the middle road who might change their opinon (and therefore the laws etc of the land) to write you off as someone not worthy of debate. While it may serve somehow as an outlet for your anger and outrage at your treatment by some of these folks, I submit it’s less than a good decision, practically speaking. ---
**Author:** ![Kirkland1244](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dc4da7/32.png) [@Kirkland1244](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kirkland1244)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/259 "2002-06-26T21:10:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by wring \* > on a practical note, **KIrkland** your stance/reply to **musicguys’** request has a couple of problems - > > A. It allowed you to completely gloss over the admonition by the Administrator, (or perhaps you emailed instead, in which case I withdraw this objection). I actually had not seen the admonition until after I replied. If there was a functional edit function here, I would have removed the post. > [@](#): > > B. It smacks of ‘well, they did it first and they’re worser than me and and and and’, which kinda detracts from any positive argument that you make. It shouldn’t. Those who strike first bear almost all the responsibility for subsequent repurcussions. > [@](#): > > C. By focusing on people who are less likely to change their opinion and without being able to reign yourself in from the insults and so on, you risk not only banning here (personal insults in GD are not permitted), it also allows folks of the middle road who might change their opinon (and therefore the laws etc of the land) to write you off as someone not worthy of debate. If these “middle road” folk would even consider the fundamentalist bigots’ point of view, then I have no respect for their opinions or intellect. No decent person can stand against equality. No intelligent person would buy into the mockery of religion that is fundamentalism. And in any case, the battle is already over. Momentum is on the side of those seeking equality. The bigots’ sway and power is failing, which is why their lies and screeching has become more virulent. The current generation of college students, the ones who will run this country in 20 years, are overwhelmingly on the side of equality. Let the fundamentalist bigots have their day in the sun. Their era is past. That’s what breeds the cancer of fundamentalism, actually: it is a reactionary response to the repudiation of the beliefs they cling to. That’s why fundamentalism crept up in the late 19th Century, when science and theological criticism finally broke the back of braindead literal Biblical interpretation. Some people couldn’t handle reality as it truly is, and reacted violently against the truth. They cling to a faith that is based on literalism and innerancy of a book that has passed through countless hands over 30 centuries, and was written in a literary mileiu totally foreign to present day readers. In 30 years America will look on the anti-gay fundamentalists with the same scorn and rebuke that we now reserve for the racists of the 1950s. Hopefully some of them will still be alive to suffer horribly in that era, watching everything they’ve ever worked to stop come to fruition. Kirk ---
**Author:** ![wring](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/838e76/32.png) [@wring](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wring)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2002, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nickelodeon-special-on-gay-parents-would-you-let-your-kids-watch/114696/260 "2002-06-26T21:32:17Z")
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