Article + Commentary: "Arthur's Mr. Ratburn has a gay wedding on PBS children's show"

Patrick (left) and Mr. Ratburn (right). Source

 USA Today: "Authur's Mr. Ratburn has a gay wedding on PBS children's show"

Today I found out that the PBS Kids series Arthur, currently in its 22nd season (!), has shown a same-sex "wedding" for the first time in its run. Mr. Ratburn, Arthur's teacher, has just been "married" to another man named Patrick in the episode "Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone."

 I used to watch and enjoy Arthur as a kid, and the series, at least in its early days, is one of the best PBS shows ever made. It has fun, quirky characters like Arthur, his sister DW, Buster Baxter, Francine, "the Brain," and others. The show is laid back, has lessons about growing up, community, and accepting others' differences, and is overall a great feel-good cartoon. And who can forget the classic theme song? For the longest time I thought the series had ended, until I read an online forum post a while back and learned that the show had switched to Flash animation. It was then I realized the show is still in production since its premiere in 1996. Arthur is probably the longest-running cartoon on PBS.


I have not seen the series since the 2000s, so I have no say in what the show has been doing recently. However, as I watch the clip of the "wedding" itself in the article, I am reminded of the current state our society is in and the current trend of introducing young children to homosexual relationships in the media they consume.

(As a side note, this is not the first time an Arthur-related series has portrayed a same-sex couple. The spinoff series Postcards from Buster had an episode where Buster interacts with kids who have two lesbian parents. The 2005 episode was banned in many PBS stations.)

In today's secular society, particularly in the West, marriage and sexuality have been reduced to selfish pleasure-seeking activities and "identities" with little to no regard for traditional Judeo-Christian values and natural law. The sexual revolution in the last century made radical changes in the way people view sex and marriage for heterosexuals, so it was only a matter of time before people decided that practicing homosexuals should also be allowed to commit their brand of sexual sin openly and have their sexual relationships celebrated and normalized. Same-sex "marriage" was just another step in that direction, and in 2015 it became legal in all 50 states in the US.

During the time that the United States was seriously considering the idea of redefining marriage, some children's television shows had already begun to portray same-sex relationships with varying degrees of subtlety. From what I can remember, the first 2010s children's series to show a same-sex relationship was Adventure Time. Same-sex parents had already appeared on Clarence, and Steven Universe in 2015 (a mere few months before the Obergefell v. Hodges case was decided) revealed that the character Garnet is actually a fusion of the romantic couple Ruby and Sapphire. They are actually sexless, being Gems, but viewers soon caught on to the implication that they are a metaphor for a same-sex couple.

Since 2015, children's media has and will sadly continue to feature explicit homosexual relationships and same-sex "marriages," the recent Arthur episode being one example of many. I am not saying for one bit that children should be sheltered from these issues, but neither am I saying they should lose their innocence early in life. Anyone who can find that delicate balance, more power to you, although I feel that has already been accomplished with Steven Universe.