Nick News, a television show that provides educational programming for kids, is producing a news special about gay parenting and discrimination against homosexuals. The show will feature recently self-outed lesbian mom Rosie O’Donnell, members of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Gay and Lesbian Education Network, and representatives from the conservative right wing. Conservative groups, however, such as the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), are trying to put a stop to the show, calling it “homosexual propaganda.”
“Homosexual marriage, gay parents, anti-discrimination laws – these are not pervasive issues for most 8- to 13-year-olds,” TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty told Fox News. But, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, there are currently 6 to 14 million children living in a gay household in the US. Nickelodeon spokesman David Bittler indicated that the show would give these children and others the opportunity to talk about different family structures and issues of “tolerance and diversity.”
The right-wing, however, has not only vocalized their objection to the television show, but to the entire concept of homosexual families. Despite this view, however, the American Psychological Association concluded in 1995 that gays and lesbians are just as fit to be parents as heterosexuals and that there was absolutely no evidence to suggest that children of gay or lesbian parents were disadvantaged in any way relative to children of heterosexual parents.
