Kiddie Porn? Below is a message, in full, from
Mrs. Andrea Lafferty, Executive Director of the Traditional Values
Coalition:
Dear Friend,
Nickelodeon will be airing a show this summer that will promote homosexual sodomy as a normal lifestyle to our nation's children! I have just signed a petition urging Nickelodeon to cancel production of this pro-homosexual show. I am urging you to sign this petition to protest this effort to normalize homosexuality. Nickelodeon leaders must get the message that they should not be promoting sodomy to children! Please join with more than 43,000 concerned citizens who have already signed this petition! To sign this petition, go to: Stop Nickelodeon.
Just imagine, the premier children's cable network, in between re-runs of "The Andy Griffith Show" and "The Beverly Hillbillies," will be instructing the tikes on the intricacies of anal penetration. My, this world is truly a den of sin. Lottie, get the checkbook!
The show, by the way, is one of a series of "Nick News" reports, produced by veteran journalist Linda Ellerbee, examining topics in the news -- this time on gay rights.
Fortuyn's legacy. IGF stalwart Jonathan Rauch
forwarded these off-the-cuff comments, recommending a piece in the
usually gay-unfriendly National Review about Pim Fortuyn, the
recently assassinated Dutch conservative/libertarian political
leader who might well have become his nation's first openly gay
prime minister. Writes Jon:
Here's a piece that might be worth recommending to blog readers, a very astute article by John O'Sullivan arguing that Fortuyn may have been the start of something big. He picks up on the fact that gays -- appalled by the virulent homophobia of many Muslim fundamentalists and disappointed by the establishment's indulgence of said attitudes -- are fast moving into the orbit of Europe's growing conservative/libertarian coalition. Joining them are many feminists, Jews, and blue collars. Could be, he notes, the beginning of a European political realignment that both broadens the right's base and softens its edges.
Yes indeed. Told that it's "extremist" or "fascistic" to question immigration or criticize Muslim intolerance, that Israel is a brute and Al-Fatah is on the side of the angels, and that nationalism and patriotism are outdated in the age of the EU, gays and Jews and blue collars and others are naturally going to say: Stuff it. And the European establishment seems eager to drive away all these voters -- epitomized by Fortuyn himself -- by pooh-poohing them as neanderthals. In fact, the left had more problems with Fortuyn's politics than the right did with his homosexuality.
One other interesting aspect: O'Sullivan is utterly matter-of-fact about the prospect of gays joining a European conservative coalition. He even seems to welcome it. You'd never have seen that in National Review a few years ago, when failure to write snidely about homosexuals cost conservatives their union card.
Is this truly a shift in the political tides? We shall see.