I noticed recently that there seems
to be a bit of a trend in the message of a majority of children's media in the
past, say, 20 years. When I start going through a list of movies that I have
seen, dating back from the early 1990's, most of them seem to embrace the idea
that family is not necessarily
blood-it's the people who love you the most. Most of these movies star
characters that are orphans or whose parents are divorced and in the end the
child comes to the realization that they have a family after all. While I
certainly realize that such situations are exceedingly painful, and that no one
wants to feel like they only have half of a family, or no family at all, the
truth of the matter is that the concept of a family has been slowly redefined
in my generation, and will probably be more so in the next.
If you will notice most of the Disney movies that originated
in the 1950's featured a child that generally had siblings, and both parents.
(An exception would be The Parent Trap, in which the plot of the story is that
the girls are trying to get their divorced parents back together.) Movies that
were done (or redone) in the 1990's typically feature only one parent, or step
parents, step siblings, etc. The conflict between the parents provides an
integral part of the plot.
Now, I'm not
advocating the boycotting of movies that use this idea-in my opinion that would
be going overboard. It isn't hard for a child to see that the lives of the
child and parents in the movie are messed up. My problem lies more with the slow
redefining of family than with the plot of the movies. Upon stepping back and looking at the
assertion that family is a group of people that love each other, I see an
agenda. If a child's family can be just Mom, or just Dad, or their friend's family
that takes them in because their own parents don't care, or whatever...what's
to say family can't be two Moms or two Dads? The eroding of the idea that a
family is Dad and Mom (who are married
and live together) and the children opens up the door to the idea that family
can be two men and their adopted children, or two women. I think that that is exactly the purpose.
As I look through history I see a slow turn in people's
thinking from generation to generation. The idea that ‘the ends justify the
means’, or Situation Ethics, is a theme of the kid's movies in the 1950's. Most
people believed that right was right and wrong was wrong, but the idea has
gradually crept in that it's ok to lie if you have a good reason, or it's ok to
steal someone's animal if they're abusing it. The same thing is happening with
homosexuality. The idea is being gradually introduced into mainstream media
that it is ok to be "gay".
I was reading a parenting magazine last Friday (sitting in
the waiting room of a tire shop) and noticed several references to dealing with
your kids' school mates that "have
two mommies or daddies" and how to explain that to your kids. YUCK! I sit
and watch as kids' shows and books promote this new definition of family, and I
wonder, what will my children's generation (and I hope not my children) think
of homosexuality? Most people in my generation, while not approving, are used
to it.
It doesn't shock me
any more to see two men or women together. It's disgusting, but not appalling.
What will our children think, as they grow up with stories that have this
altered idea of family? We have been exposed more and more to the idea that
homosexuality is normal. There are magazine articles and talk shows featuring
homosexuality as normal or "just different." Homosexuals are
frequently on reality TV shows, either as guests or hosts. Still, we don't
think twice about why this "diversity" has become so prevalent. We
don't see the motivation behind the magazine articles and the TV shows. We
don't stop and think when we hear "Family can be anyone you love" at
the end of the family movie. We seem to miss the rather apparent agenda. Why
don't we realize there are forces that are after our children's minds to blind
them from the truth? Are we blind already?
