The Parents Television Council is No More

This article is from back in October, but I smiled when I recently came across it. The Parents Television Council, a Christian organization founded to promote censorship of television programs such as South Park and Family Guy, filed for bankruptcy late last year. And as far as I'm concerned, good riddance to them.

Christian media censorship has always confused me. Having read the Bible multiple times, I can say with some certainty that there's nothing in scripture that prohibits media of any kind. Sometimes people try to argue that "taking the name of the Lord in vain" prohibits exclamations like "Jesus Christ!" or "God damn it!" but that's not at all what it means. It means swearing to do something in the name of God and then not doing it. So integrity, not family-friendly language.

The PTC hated South Park and Family Guy more than either of them could ever hate each other, and, for years, the Christian censorship organization regularly denounced the shows while orchestrating write-in campaigns urging the FCC to take action against them. Unfortunately for the perpetually triggered parents of the PTC, this week, the once-feared organization filed for bankruptcy amidst mounting debt and following a steep, decades-long decline in their political influence. The ancient and common enemy of crass cartoon comedy seems to be defeated — the PTC might even have to sell all those pearls they’ve been clutching.

Conservative political activist Leo Brent Bozell III founded the PTC in 1995 to combat what he perceived to be a decline in “decency” in mass media. Officially, the PTC advocated for “responsible, family-friendly content across all media platforms,” but, in practice, that meant using public shaming and the mass filing of FCC complaints to pressure networks into censoring or pre-empting any material that didn’t align with the PTC’s socially conservative politics. While the PTC was most famous for lambasting networks whenever a performer in a live broadcast would slip in a swear word (or, in Janet Jackson’s case, slip a nip), the group was also accused of being a deeply homophobic organization that fought against the rise of gay representation in television that coincided with their own cultural ascent.

What the fundies never seem to understand is that their religion doesn't prohibit me from doing anything. I don't follow their strict interpretation of Christianity - and as a matter of fact, a lot of Christians don't either. So if we non-fundies want to watch comedy show with adult themes, that should be none of their business. I get that they don't want their kids watching, but you deal with that issue by actually being an attentive parent and knowing what your kids are doing. You don't deal with it by policing everyone else unless you're an asshole.

Christian censorship is especially annoying because it doesn't just target obvious obscenity. It targets any mention of the fact that gay people exist. It targets any mention of pagan religious beliefs. It targets anything remotely related to sexuality, even educational programming. It's basically the media arm of the Poor Oppressed Christian movement, since as far as I can tell they consider themselves oppressed by the mere existence of a lot of things that are just part of the modern world.

These folks really should abandon this idea that the world needs to be sanitized to their idea of "family friendly" and instead pay attention to their own families. They may not believe it, but the rest of us are perfectly content to leave them alone with their regressive beliefs.