A new television reboot of the children’s show Clifford the Big Red Dog includes a two-mom family (with a lesbian actor voicing one of the moms). How did this news break? Not because of any outreach to the LGBTQ community on the part of the show, but because a hate group is calling on its members to speak out against it.
Big, Red, and Inclusive
The new Clifford series launched on Amazon Prime and PBS Kids last December. Like the classic children’s books by Norman Bridwell on which it is based (and an earlier television adaptation), it centers on the adventures of a girl named Emily Elizabeth and her large red canine. Towards the end of the episode “Dogbot,” we meet the two moms of Emily Elizabeth’s friend Samantha. They’re on screen for all of a few seconds as they come over to Emily Elizabeth’s for a dinner party she’s hosting. “Won’t you please join us?” Emily Elizabeth says.
One mom, Ms. Mulberry (Julie Lemieux), responds, “It would be our pleasure. Ooh, something smells delicious.”
The other, Dr. Mulberry, looks at the flowers on the table and adds, “And what a beautiful bouquet.”
There’s then another shot that shows Samantha and her moms for about two seconds, but that’s it. That’s all the two-mom exposure we get. One of Samantha’s moms also appears in the episode The Big Red World, but there’s no mention there of her spouse.
(Bonus fun fact: One of Samantha’s moms, Dr. Mulberry, is voiced by actor, talk show host, and comedian Maggie Cassella, who is also a lesbian. Cassella, among other things, has founded the We’re Funny That Way Foundation, with the goal of “raising funds to support queer organizations across Canada,” and, in a previous career as a lawyer, dealt with early cases involving people with AIDS, issues around marriage for transgender people, “and bringing the test case for gay adoption to Connecticut,” according to her website.)
A History of Hate
That brief depiction was enough, however, for One Million Moms, part of the hate group the American Family Association, to ask its (fewer than one million) members to tell PBS Kids that it disapproves of tax dollars being used to support such programming. They call PBS “largely supported by federal funds,” though in reality, only about 14 percent of PBS’ revenue streams are from federal grants.
Readers may recall that in the 2005 “Sugartime!
PBS pulled the episode. WGBH aired it, however, and offered it independently to PBS stations. Fifty-seven stations, representing more than half of PBS viewers, chose to broadcast it. Producer Jeanne Jordan told the New York Times in 2006, however, that the controversy made it difficult to find funds for a second season.
More recently, the PBS Kids shows Arthur and Sesame Street have shown brief depictions of same-sex couples, and gay actor Billy Porter is set to appear on an upcoming episode of the latter wearing his iconic black tuxedo dress. Children’s shows on other networks have also been more LGBTQ inclusive in recent years—I’m going to be running a lengthy piece on this next week, so stay tuned. I’ll note, though, that the new Clifford show is produced by Scholastic, which, after a few early bumps, has been producing enough LGBTQ-inclusive kids’ and young adult books to spur One Million Moms into issuing an action alert against them in 2018 (and to spark a counter-call of support from the LGBTQ community).
Why Didn’t We Know First?
I’m frustrated, though, because even though the new Clifford series dropped several months ago, it’s taken until now for word to break in the LGBTQ community about its inclusion of same-sex parents—and it was One Million Moms who did us this favor. Near as I can tell, the first public posting about this in the LGBTQ community was at Joe.My.God on February 24, when he wrote about the One Million Moms call to action. Similarly, Netflix’s Chip and Potato, another queer-inclusive show for preschoolers, dropped last November, but it wasn’t until I posted about it at the end of January (after I happened to hear another mom mention it privately) that its queer inclusion became widespread knowledge. Amazon has also quietly shown characters with same-sex parents on its shows for young children, Pete the Cat and Bug Diaries.
Granted, simply including an LGBTQ character shouldn’t always be Big News, especially when the inclusion is a only brief depiction of a secondary character or family. (Hulu’s The Bravest Knight remains the only show for very young children to center on an LGBTQ character or family—and they did do outreach to the LGBTQ community.) Yet one of the most common questions I hear from other LGBTQ parents is “Where can I find LGBTQ-inclusive media for my kids?” We’re desperate for this stuff (even as we recognize that LGBTQ-inclusive television is for all children, who should see LGBTQ people as part of their world).
Perhaps the networks are afraid of backlash. As One Million Moms has shown, however, the backlash will happen whether the networks reach out to the LGBTQ community or not. All the networks are doing is missing the opportunity to establish a fervent early fan base that can help counter the detractors. How many more studies of LGBTQ consumer brand loyalty do we need?
Television producers and marketing executives: When you have any LGBTQ characters in your shows, call GLAAD. Call Family Equality. Call me. If your show’s any good (because we do have standards besides mere inclusion), we’ll help give you a set of loyal viewers who will joyously spread the word about your show and also stand as a firewall against One Million Moms and other hate groups. We’ll also happily suggest ways to include more of us with authentic, fun, and relevant storylines. We’re delighted you’re taking steps to make shows for all children that reflect their families and their world, and we’ll help you make them even bigger and better. Just please let us know about them.