Dr. Seuss vs. Mr. Potato Head

On Saturday, I wrote a little poem to share my take on the Dr. Seuss drama. I inserted it in a meme creator, and shared it on Facebook. In one group, I see it has been shared over 200 times and has about as many comments. Here it is. 

If you read my previous blog posts, you can see that I plea that everyone be sensitive to racial injustice and engage in humble dialogue on the subject. I do think that Dr. Seuss' family exemplified that by ceasing to print six of his sixty books that contain words and pictures that are likely to make some kids feel embarrassed or singled out because of their ethnicity. These words and pictures are also the very thing that reinforce norms that create and allow systemic racism. 

Imagine a jury made up of a white majority deciding the fate of a young black man on trial. Or a young white man. Somehow the young black man gets the death penalty for destroying the evidence of a heinous crime one of his fellow gang members committed. The young white man is considered in a different light, though his crime more severe. He has a bright future ahead of him, etc. These biases are indoctrinated into the minds of children and it is wise for us to take them seriously. I recently wrote a post about just this. 

There was much discussion trying to portray Dr. Seuss as a victim being persecuted, as though his name would now go down in history as a dirty racist! Dramatic much? 

Now, about a week before the Dr. Seuss memes started circulating, there was hype about a decision Mr. Potato Head made. The name is being changed from Mr. Potato Head to simply Potato Head and there is a new family pack coming out with two adult sized potatoes, a baby, and a variety of body parts to create your own family, basically. This announcement has a little video presenting the changes and new product. You can see the video says, "There's no wrong way to play".    

So I just want to talk about these two situations in comparison since they are being grouped together as if they are the same thing. I see them as two completely different issues, despite the fact that they are so often lumped together in American politics, which I think does the issue of racial justice a disservice. While racial justice should be a no brainer for people with Christian beliefs or anyone who believes that everyone is created equally, the issue of sexual orientation is highly controversial when held up to the bible and to nature, actually. I don't wish to get into it all here, but to say a few things about content made for children.

I was outside of the U.S. during all of the Obama Administration and Trump Administration. Here in the Dominican Republic, I cannot say that I know a local same sex couple. As for my friends in the United States who are in same sex marriages or transgender, the last thing I want to do is to make them feel like I have anything but love for them as my friends from our youth, and also as people made in the image of God. I do, however, have concerns for where this is all going. 

Although I have been outside of the U.S. during a time when a lot of changes have been made in the area of sexual orientation, I have been able to observe changes in children's content. My personal view is that, out of respect for our loving God and his word given to us through the bible, which is a book that has proven to be alive to me on endless accounts of which I'm happy to share if inquired, I would prefer that same sex couples and transgenderism is not present in the content that my children watch. I see it as an attempt to indoctrinate them to normalize something that the bible teaches as outside of God's will. Maybe I don't fully understand God's stance on the issue, but there is enough language to make me quite cautious. Now, the bible also clearly condemns other things that are normalized at times, like pride, and I think we should push against them all. 

Of course it is appalling to think of a parent that would reject or hurt their child if they came to them to say they were experiencing attraction to their same sense, gender dysphoria, or anything along those lines. But that doesn't mean that in avoiding exposure to your child at a young age, you are one of those parents. Even if I don't always understand why, trust and respect for God means that we don't always have to fully understand to obey. 

Of course I have the choice to regulate what my children watch and what they don't. The issue is that parents don't normally have to screen content that is made for children. You normally assume that it would be void of adult content because it's made for children. But these days, it seems as though content creators want to include homosexuality into children's content, perhaps in an effort to teach kids to be more inclusive. And here is where the problem lies. 

I have never been able to figure out how a real compromise can be reached on this issue. In fighting for the rights of a very small percentage, others rights are encroached upon. If boys who feel as though they are girls can play girls' sports, then girls are made to compete against biological boys. And these boys have a huge and unfair advantage. That doesn't seem to make any sense. Furthermore, by letting boys play girls' sports because of a cognitive measure rather than physical, you've defeated the whole purpose of even having gender organized sports. This is just what example of many. The point is that I find it to be a very controversial and difficult topic where I struggle to find a sensible solution. Where do we express sensitivity for the struggles of others, challenge gender norms which I agree deserve to be challenged at times, and where do we draw the line on catering to constructs that are cognitive and not physical? 

Sexuality is not a children's topic but a pre-teen and beyond topic. Therefore, it only makes sense to me that it not be brought up or portrayed in children's shows, movies, and books. Is that too much to ask? Yes, showing two women as a couple is not overtly sexual, but the explanation behind it is. Have you not realized that in so many studies, there is a stance taken on one extreme, then the opposite extreme, and the solution always seems to be blend? I'll throw an example out there. Everyone accepted that personality was a biological construct. Then, it is challenged, and the other extreme is taken. Everyone accepted that personality was a product of one's environment. Then some other smart guy comes along and says, "Hey! It's actually a blend of both." Have you noticed this pattern over and over again, especially in the social sciences? I suppose I feel as though we have gone to a bit of an extreme on this issue and may need to balance it out. 

No one should be targeted by hate. If anything has come out of these changes, I hope that that has been made more clear. But can we not accept some limits? Conservatives have been critiqued for not accepting science on certain matters such as global warming and the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But what the heck is going on with intervening medically with teenagers who report going through gender dysphoria? Where is the science that supports that that is a good idea? You wouldn't ask a teenager to commit to a college major at that point so why in the world would you engage in such a big decision like changing your sex medically? Anyone doing so is placing a lot of faith in a theory on transgenderism and a diagnosis they were given.

I recently heard Preston Sprinkles in a Holy Post podcast discuss this topic. He introduced Keira Bell who sued in the UK because she was medicalized in this way. He also discussed one doctor's argument that girls could always have breasts put back on later in life if they regretted having them removed at ages as young as 13!! Do they think people function just like Mr. Potato Head or the Potato Head family pack? Do they think that there's no wrong way to play this game of life, as the video introducing the new Potato Head family pack says? 

He said that many are concerned about this practice, yet it's going on. I hope we can see that this is not just a matter of accepting and celebrating people for what they are, which is what racial justice is about. The issue of transgenderism seems to be the opposite. It seems to influence people to feel empowered to change who they physically are. Are we getting overconfident? Keira Bell's interview testifies to the influence of media over youth in this way. 

In my last blog post, I examined the two topics of hell and evolution. I argued that much is taught on both issues that is not conclusive and that we should simply stick to what we know and admit what we don't know. While listing certainties we know in science, I said, "Natural is healthy but we can intervene if need be." When I wrote that, the topic of LBGTQ was far from my mind. I just realized, though, how much these modern practices are in contrast to that. 

I'd also like to examine in a future post how the theory of evolution is inherently racist. I realized this while watching a documentary with my kids the other day. A quick Google search shows that many others already realized the same. Now that Dr. Seuss has been appropriately corrected, it's time to go after Darwin! And I don't see how Darwin will justifiably come out with just a small fraction of his work suspended when passed through the same test! Let's not be hypocritical.