Please only answer if you were raised by religious folks.
So I’m sitting here watching She-Ra and thinking, “I can’t believe my mom wouldn’t let me watch this.” When I was a kid, I thought it was the stupidest thing ever, and didn’t learn until I started college that forbidding He-Man and She-Ra was actually a thing. I just dismissed it all that time as my mom being being crazy and fobby again. Love her guts, but, you know…
So anyway, I decided to go full on Science with this one, and conduct a poll. This is not the most random SDMB poll, btw. Someone once asked if we had a piece of pencil graphite permanently stuck some place on our bodies. My answer to that question was yes.
No not at all. Only thing forbidden in our house was graphic portrayals of sex, my dad used to stand in front of the telly to stop our innocent eyes being besmirched.
No. I couldn’t watch shows with explicit sex or violence or stuff that was really scary, so movies like Poltergeist would be out, but there’s no way my parents considered He-Man “the occult”. So, yeah, I don’t get the idea that ashow could get “too magical and shouldn’t be watched”. I mean, my mom wasn’t all that fond of me playing D&D, but I think that was because she was worried kill myself in the sewer tunnels or something. She still didn’t stop me, though.
I wasn’t allowed to watch “Soap” because it was condemned by the Catholic Church. Fortunately, my mom took a class that happened to meet on the nights “Soap” was on. I could watch almost all of it before I heard her car and had to switch off the TV and run upstairs.
Not He-Man specifically, that came along a little bit after our time, but friends of mine who were into Dungeons and Dragons were instructed by their Church to burn their entire collections, which I believe they did. One of the friends regretted it a couple of years later, but the other is now a Pastor himself and is probably saying the same things to teens today.
My religious school convinced a number of parents to ban He-Man, specifically because of their use of the tagline “Masters of the Universe.” They claimed it was a deliberate swipe at God, whom we know is the only Master of the Universe. I don’t think they got into anything more elaborate than that-- nothing about the occult, and nothing about Prince Adam being gay-- but years later, I got in trouble for having a Classic X-Men comic that had demon-like things on the cover (everyone ignored the fact that Storm was on the cover in tattered clothing) because it was “occult.”
Oh, and D&D was way out of the question for everyone; it was risky to let it be known you played computer role playing games, since “role playing games” in general encouraged Satan worship, rape, drug use, etc.
I’m too old for He-Man, but Mom forbade me from reading Marvel comics when she saw me with a Thor; she already disliked them previously for being “boyish”, but that Thor made her blow a couple of gaskets. The mother of the friend who actually owned that Thor (she was in a religious group with Mom) berated her for it, asking whether she thought I was that dumb; still, Mom didn’t stop looking at Marvel comics, and later at RPGs, with extreme suspicion until that frabjous day when she realized that RPGs were the one thing that had finally motivated The Bros to try and learn English and Littlebro to read (the first time he read a non-class-required book it was LotR, at age 15).
She still claims that the “boys” comics that she herself read when she was 9-10 (the age I was at the time of The Thor Incident) and which had stuff like a templar knight fighting demonic cults were “different”. Yeah, Mom: because they were yours.
Is it worrisome that I know which issue of X-Men is Student Driver talking about?
I’m too old for He-Man, so no. However, my mother did have huge problems with The Outer Limits, Tales of Terror, The Twilight Zone, and Night Gallery. She and her gaggle of fundie friends were all convinced those shows were satanic which, of course, made them so much more exciting to watch behind her back.
My mom was fine with He-Man but I wasn’t into it. My brother didn’t have the toys but some of my male friends did. My mom was against scary or sexual stuff, like Captain Amazing’s mom.
My aunt is super religious and she wouldn’t let her girls have any unicorn or pegasus My Little Pony dolls, because those things are apparently evil. Only horse-shaped dolls for them!
My fairly a-religious sorta-hippy parents wouldn’t let me watch it because of the violence. The ban only lasted a few months though, then even they realized they were being kinda silly.
Still couldn’t watch R-rated movies till I was in Highschool though
No, my parents were fine with He-Man. I grew up in a kind of weirdly religious family - my parents were very devout (and still are) but my mom came from a Catholic background and my dad was a foot-washin’ Baptist, and they compromised at Presbyterian. So, for instance, when the preacher came over my dad would hide the liquor and my mom would be confused. We got a new pastor when I was 15 or so and my parents invited him and his wife to dinner after I’d already babysat for them - my dad was hiding the liquor and I had to tell him, dude, they collect wine! They have a huge wine cellar! They’ll probably bring a bottle of wine! Chill out!
He was still kind of uncomfortable with it.
But no, I was never restricted like that for religious reasons, just the regular parenting ones.
I’m a little old for that, too. My mother wouldn’t forbid us from listening to Alice Cooper, but she certainly didn’t encourage it. She did absolutely forbid me from wearing mascara snake eyes to school when I was twelve.
Nope. In fact I was only allowed He-Man. I could watch GI Joe and Thundercats, but I was only allowed He-Man toys. It wasn’t anything in particular about Masters of the Universe, but they were trying to prevent me from pestering them to buy lots of toys from multiple shows. So it was He-Man or nothing for a long time.
I do remember that a parental He-Man ban was discussed. My parents thought it was silly and overprotective. At the same time though, I had to lobby hard that You Can’t Do That On Television wasn’t going to corrupt me.
The kid that lived down the block couldn’t watch Thundercats. His dad was a minister.
My mom wasn’t religious. She took me to church every Sunday until I was about 13, just out of a sense of duty. She’s since become an atheist.
But she was a fucking crackpot. I could watch any violent shit in the world, but not the slightest bit of sex. We’d watch Terminator together, for example, and she’d make me leave during the very brief sex scene between Reiss and Sarah Connor. She’d say things like “I don’t want you to think that sex is like that.” Like what? Like being chased by a murderous fucking CYBORG??? No, I know it’s not like that.
Oh lords, I was sneaking into rated-R movies until the day I was 17. My ma had no beef at all with “The Twilight Zone,” but I guess that never came up in her church meeting, or wherever she learned that He-Man was bad. Also, considering she didn’t want me to watch “Dennis the Menace” because he was rude, I’m glad she didn’t get hip to “The Simpsons” until it was too late to tell me what I couldn’t watch on TV.
Edit: Thanks, Ellen, but now I’m too lazy and don’t care enough to start another thread.
I was way too old when “He-Man” came around but, religious as Mom, Grandmom & I got, nothing innocent ever got banned. Only hard-core porn. It helped that my parents were Universal-Hammer-AIP Horror fans.
A friend at church in the 1970s couldn’t watch “Planet of the Apes” as it promoted Evolution. Then again, the same church had Halloween parties into the mid-1970s & then stopped. There was no reason given but I blame Mike Warnke.
