The Cartoon Network series “Clarence” recently featured a gay kiss by two male characters: the scene appeared during a vignette featuring a woman waiting for her blind date at a restaurant; an attractive man walks through the door; the woman notices him; another man enters – the two men kiss and they leave together. On the surface, this seems rather harmless, but it does send the message that homosexuality is now nothing out of the ordinary; reminds me of the loathsome video for the Carley Rae Jepsen single “Call Me Maybe” which used the same tired old joke; that one was aimed at teens, this one goes after those who are much younger.
FYI: Cartoon Network is owned by Turner Broadcasting which in turn is a division of Time Warner. As of 2013, Cartoon Network is available in approximately 98,671,000 pay television households (86.4% of households with television) in the United States. Interestingly, Cartoon Network has, during its history, broadcast most of the Warner Brothers animated shorts originally created between the 1920s and the 1960s, including Bugs Bunny, but censored individual scenes as well as entire cartoons which depicted discharge of gunfire, alcohol ingestion, tobacco, ethnic stereotypes, and politically incorrect humor. Time Warner also owns the heavily gay-friendly CNN.