To the Editor:
I would like to respond to Julia Bernstein's column "The Bonfire of the Inanities" (Feb. 14). She claims that conservative Christians' objections to portrayals of homosexual or non-traditional family structures in children's cartoons trivialize the issue of protecting children from potentially harmful content on television. She states, "the overall ridiculousness of [these] claims makes more worthwhile efforts seem just as silly." Yet, she undermines her argument by failing to demonstrate why the conservatives' claims are "ridiculous."
Her central argument seems to be that there are greater dangers than homosexuality against which children should be protected and that children are not able to understand the "nuances" of alternative family structures on television. I doubt that children are that ignorant. It seems quite plausible a child watching a television program in which a young character has two mothers might ask, "Where is the daddy?" Violence on television may be more damaging to children than seeing homosexuals, but Bernstein never says why the former is worse than the latter.
Protests against homosexuality in children's programming are neither "ridiculous," nor do they trivialize the issue of protecting children from illicit content. There is a legitimate debate in this country over whether the homosexual family structure should be given an equal place in society. By lambasting conservative Christians' opinions as "ridiculous," Bernstein does not contribute to it.
