SpongeBob video on way to schools

A children’s music video that conservatives charge is part of an effort to encourage acceptance of homosexuality is being distributed to more than 60,000 schools nationwide.

The video features about 100 children’s TV characters including SpongeBob SquarePants, Miss Piggy and Oscar the Grouch singing the 1979 disco hit “We Are Family.”

It will be accompanied by a teaching guide that promotes tolerance of diversity.

“The opportunity to bring that message to children around the entire country is truly exciting,” said Caryl Stern, senior associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “We know at ADL that people are not born as little haters; we learn to hate. And just as we learn to hate, we have to unlearn to hate.”

To produce and distribute the video, the ADL teamed with the We Are Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization founded by music producer Nile Rodgers, who co-wrote “We Are Family.”

TV networks and production companies also are involved, and FedEx has agreed to ship the videos for free.

The effort sparked controversy in January when the American Family Association, in an article by the editor of its monthly journal, Ed Vitagliano, charged that the video had a pro-gay subtext.

In a telephone interview, Vitagliano said he does not object to the “innocuous” video itself but to the accompanying teaching guide, which he said “distorts the definition of family to produce a nontraditional model.”