The Disney Channel made history last month when it featured the very first openly gay characters to appear on the channel. The show “Good Luck Charlie” had an episode that focused around a play date between Charlie and her new friend Taylor, who happens to have two moms. Seems pretty innocent, right?

Upon the airing of the episode, conservative anti-gay groups like One Million Moms rushed to the web to show their distaste with the program. Here’s an excerpt of the statement in question:

“Disney has decided to be politically correct instead of providing family-friendly programming. Disney should stick to entertaining, not pushing an agenda. Conservative families need to urge Disney to avoid controversial topics that children are far too young to comprehend.”

It was no surprise that extremist conservative groups had a problem with this. After all, in their minds the LGBT population’s main goal is to recruit and corrupt the minds of our youth. So, the backlash was expected, but this isn’t where the backlash stopped. The LAPD’s Threat Management Group began investigating death threats to the five-year-old that plays Charlie through her Instagram account.

This is where it gets completely ridiculous. I am well aware that there are radicals in every group of people, but these threats speak to the amount of hate that still exists toward members of the LGBT community. This hate toward this innocent five-year-old, who happened to be on a show that featured a lesbian couple, pushes the idea forward even more that LGBT characters need positive visibility in the media.

To try to condemn a show all because it is giving a misrepresented minority group some visibility is just ignorant. As for the argument that One Million Moms presented in relation to the subject of a loving couple being too complex and controversial to understand, love is one of the most expressed human emotions. Sure, love is complex, but it’s better to instill principles of love into our children than principles of hate. My advice to One Million Moms is to stop letting television educate your children if you disagree with a particular message, step up, be a parent and raise your kids in your ways so that one day hopefully they can break away and form an opinion of their own.

dhaynie@mavs.coloradomesa.edu