This past week controversy has been swarming around an organization called the We Are Family Foundation (WAFF) and what Dr. James Dobson, founder and chairman of the Christian organization Focus on the Family, has called “an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids.” And if there is one thing conservative Christians know better than anyone, it’s manipulating and brainwashing kids, right?

What is WAFF planning on poisoning our country’s children with? A music video remake of the Sister Sledge song “We Are Family” featuring over 100 children’s television stars, including Bob the Builder, Spongebob and Barney. In the video the cartoon characters sing and cavort in order to promote, in creator Nile Rogers’ words, “the spirit of cooperation and unity.”

On his Web site, Dobson has voiced his concern that “these popular animated personalities are being exploited by an organization that is determined to promote the acceptance of homosexuality among our nation’s youth” because of a tolerance pledge that appears on the WAFF Web site, which attempts to instill respect for other people’s abilities, beliefs, culture, race and (gasp) sexual identity. The objectors to the site’s tolerance pledge say that it is unnecessary to include homosexuals, but the point of a tolerance pledge is to tolerate everyone, including gays. And when did tolerance become synonymous with advocacy?

Other groups like the American Family Association (AFA) have jumped on the bandwagon. AFA has posted an article by AgapePress, which starts “It is as unprecedented as it is cunning, using all the right words and happiest faces in an attempt to speak directly to the nation’s children about ‘tolerance and diversity.’ Once again, of course, those ideas include homosexual advocacy.”

Rogers believes that the controversy started as a misunderstanding. There is an organization called We Are Family for “informed straight and gay people who support our gay relatives and friends by working to spread truth about homosexuality” that is in no way associated with the We Are Family Foundation. This seems like a pretty easy mistake to make, but instead of apologizing, it seems that these groups are trying to deflect their mistake by citing the tolerance pledge, which doesn’t seem very Christian to me.

In response to questions about the tolerance pledge that appears on the WAFF Web site and does include sexual identity, Rogers says “I can’t very well talk about being a unified force and say you, you and not you…we’re not a private club.” The tolerance pledge is on the Web site and not included in the music video.

I don’t think that if a Christian group came out with a video about tolerance that was free of religious references that people would be up in arms just because it said something about Jesus Christ on their Web site. However, the accusations directed at WAFF are pertaining to the video, not the Web site. Rogers says “Not only is (the video) not pro-homosexual, it has nothing to do with sexuality.”

It should be dually noted that Dobson had never actually seen the music video before making statements about its promotion of homosexuality last week while addressing members of Congress at a black tie dinner celebrating President Bush’s inauguration.

It was at this same meeting of the minds that Dobson brought to light some interesting theories about Spongebob Squarepants’ sexual orientation. Dobson had not seen the video before releasing a statement on his Web site standing by his original comments, sans the singling out of Spongebob.

No one in the general public was supposed to see the video until March when it was to be simultaneously distributed to 61,000 public and private schools and aired on PBS, Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. However, on Sunday the WAFF released the video in its entirety to MSNBC, presumably to squelch rumors of a secret gay agenda. I myself have seen the music video, and Spongebob in the mere 10 seconds he appears comes off completely heterosexual.

Elizabeth Aleman is a senior in LAS. Her column appears Tuesdays. She can be reached at [email protected]