LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Excellent AlterNet article about how the Focus on the Family foundation made total fools out of themselves:

Quicker than you can say, I can't believe they're going after a cartoon sponge, Dobson's cronies in the holier-than-thou contingent weighed in on the underwater turbulence.

"Tolerance" and "diversity" are part of a "coded language that is regularly used by the homosexual community," said a spokesman from the reliably over-caffeinated Family Research Council; while Donald Wildmon, chairman of the American Family Association and reigning Chicken Little of moral depravity, warned parents everywhere to be on the lookout for the sinful video making its way into their kids' classrooms.

Short of a perverse aversion to seafood, why on earth would these men carry such an ample supply of venom for the Spongester? Perhaps it's because SpongeBob occasionally holds hands with Patrick, his starfish buddy, or that the show itself has reportedly become something of a fad among gay adults (sort of like an aquatic Judy Garland).

Or maybe it's simply because the moral crusaders – buoyed by the turnout of the evangelical vote in November, and interpreting that as a mandate to go on the attack – have finally lost their minds. (As a dumbfounded spokesman for Nickelodeon aptly commented: "It's a sponge, for crying out loud. He has no sexuality.")

***

When the dust – rather, seaweed – finally settled on last week's silly debacle, a few salient facts bubbled to the surface of the brine. As it turns out, the whackos who originally led the attack on the We Are Family Foundation had logged onto the wrong web site in their search for ammunition. Rather than boot up the Foundation's site – www.wearefamilyfoundation.org – they'd mistakenly gone to the home page of the similarly named We Are Family organization (www.waf.org), which is, indeed, a gay and lesbian resource site. But instead of fessing up to messing up – especially now that the media was running with (and laughing at) the story – the resourceful Christians doubled back onto the Foundation's site, found the tolerance pledge, and had the smoking sponge they needed.

Never mind the fact that the pledge is a wholly separate entity on the site, and won't be part of the music video campaign. Those are just little details. And if there's one thing the Dobsons and Wildmons of the world hate, it's details.

The only good thing to come of SpongeGate, of course, is that, in classic style, Dobson and company over-reached, and in the process of chumming for anti-gay outrage among Americans, wound up sinking their own dinghy. It's a small victory for the good guys, but a pretty darn sweet one just the same.