Feb 04, 2005  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO JR.  | COMMENTS     

U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings triggered a national debate over gay content in children’s television programming last week when she criticized an episode of the popular TV program “Postcards From Buster” for depicting children with lesbian mothers.

The Public Broadcasting System, which distributes the “Buster” program to local public television stations, announced it would withhold the release of the episode with the lesbian mothers, saying the episode failed to properly cover a “sensitive issue.”

A PBS official said the public television network made that decision hours before it received a Jan. 25 letter from Spellings saying the Department of Education has “strong and very serious concerns” about the episode.

“Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode,” Spellings said in her letter, which the department released to the news media.

John Wilson, the PBS senior vice president for programming, said Spellings’ letter had nothing to do with PBS’ decision to withhold the episode. But entertainment industry observers questioned that assertion, noting that Spellings told PBS in her letter that the government wanted a “refund” for its partial funding of the “Buster” episode if PBS decided to air it.

Spellings also said Congress did not intend to use government funding “to introduce this kind of subject matter to children.”

The flap over the “Buster” episode came less than a month after the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family charged that another children’s cartoon figure, SpongeBob SquarePants, was being used by gay rights advocates to promote gay rights through the guise of “diversity.” The creator of the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon disputed this claim, saying Focus on the Family misconstrued the program, which merely supports tolerance and understanding of all people.

The “Buster” series features an animated, 8-year-old rabbit named Buster Baxter who travels with his father to communities throughout the U.S. and Canada, where he meets children of different cultures, religions and ethnic backgrounds. The children and families Buster meets are real rather than animated.

Buster meets lesbian moms
In the episode in question, Buster and his father travel to Vermont to learn how maple sugar and cheese are made. The real-life children in two homes that Buster visits introduce him to their parents, who consist of two pairs of moms, before the families show him how to make syrup and cheese.

Public television station WGBH of Boston, which produces the ‘Buster’ program, said it would defy both Spellings and PBS by distributing the episode with the lesbian mothers to any station that requests it. So far, 24 stations out of the 249-station PBS network have agreed to show the program, including stations in New York, California, Vermont, and Pennsylvania.

The public television stations in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, including D.C.’s WETA-Channel 26, said they would not broadcast the episode.

“The point of this Vermont episode was not to explore alternative family structures,” said Wilson, the PBS vice president. “The point of the Vermont episode was to go to Vermont and literally see what that corner of the world is.”

Wilson added, “It just became increasingly clear to us that the context of the family where Buster was going to visit, the family structure … continued to intrude into the foreground and really obscured what the actual point of the program was,” prompting PBS to scrap the episode.

Although distributed by PBS, the ‘Buster’ program is produced by the Boston public television station WGBH-TV. Bridgid Sullivan, WGBH’s vice president for children’s programming, defended the episode with the lesbian mothers, saying it was in keeping with a Department of Education request for children’s programs that depict America’s diversity.

Sullivan told the Washington Post that the department stated in an official request for proposals for children’s programming that it was seeking TV programs to help children “understand and respect differences and learn to live in a multicultural society.”

She told the Post that in the course of producing 40 episodes of “Buster,” the program has introduced the Buster character to Mormons in Utah, Hmong immigrants in Wisconsin, a Pentecostal Christian family, Orthodox Jewish families, and Muslim children and their parents.

“[I]t was our intention to include, not to exclude, anyone who is part of our society, and for children to see a reflection of themselves on TV is an important part ...