I'm sure a whole whack of you with tweens saw this summer's awesome 3D/stop motion kids feature ParaNorman. The story is about a little 11-year-old boy who can speak to the dead and an adventure he goes on with his sister, best friend and hunky Mitch in order to save his town from ghosts and ghoulies who want to eat every one of the town's inhabitants.
Good fun, perfect for future Halloween-themed movie nights, right? Well, not according to the Family Research Council, who have taken serious issue with the film because of the line that Mitch utters when Norman's sister finally asks her crush out at the end of the film. Mitch's response?
"Sure. You're going to love my boyfriend, he's a total chick-flick nut."
AWESOME, right?
Well, not according to the FRC. They claim that this line will force parents to have conversations that they don't want to have about the nature of homosexuality.
Are you kidding me? What kind of parents don't want to have the opportunity to tell their kid about the fact that gay is OK and TOTALLY normal? What kind of parents insist that exposing their children to the mere mention of it is just all sorts of wrong?
If you haven't seen ParaNorman yet, I highly recommend you buy it or rent it from your local video store (we still have one in our neighbourhood—it's going to be on DVD and Blu-Ray in November) so that we can show the lunatics at FRC that we support gay characters in children's films!
So, spill it! What do you think about having an openly gay character in a children's movie?
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