A handful of evangelical and conservative groups is pressing the Federal Communications Commission to change the way programs are rated so parents can protect their children from LGBTQ content.
“For years, Hollywood producers have used kids’ content to push a political LGBTQ alphabet soup agenda … to indoctrinate America’s youth,” said a spokesperson for Heritage Action, the political arm of Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump administration.
Heritage Action is partnering with Concerned Women for America, American Principles Project, Moms for Liberty and three groups aligned with Focus on the Family: Family Research Council, Family Policy Alliance and Wyoming Family Alliance, which is one of 40 Focus-aligned state groups.
These groups claim the current TV ratings system the FCC developed in the 1990s is inadequate to address streaming content, neglects to single out “pervasive” LGBTQ content and neglects “parents’ rights.”
Wyoming’s U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman has introduced legislation into the U.S. House asking the FCC “to modernize America’s television content ratings system, so parents have the information they need to make informed viewing decisions for their children.”
“Streaming platforms are pushing ideology into children’s programming, and Washington has looked the other way for too long,” said a June 18 press release from Hageman, who won the House district formerly held by Liz Cheney, chairs the partisan Anti-Woke Caucus, and says one of her priorities is “defending faith, family and life.”
“Parents have the right to decide what their children watch, and the current ratings system is robbing them of that right. This resolution puts the FCC on notice that transparency is not optional,” she said.
“Currently, parents have no way of knowing whether LGBTQ content is in that program,” said Penny Nance, President of Concerned Women for America. “It’s time to give parents that choice.”
CWA released a report, “LGBTQ Messaging Pervasive In Netflix Children’s Programming,” that found “41% of G-rated series, and 41% of TV-Y7-rated series on Netflix contain LGBTQ content.”
“Any observant media consumer has been aware for some time of the increased visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and (in the last five years, especially) transgendered characters on television,” said the undated report, which examined 326 Netflix series.
Penny Nance
CWA said reboots of older series or later seasons of long-running series “frequently introduced LGBTQ characters where none existed before,” including The Magic School Bus, Power Rangers, The Baby-Sitter’s Club, She-Ra, and The Fairly OddParents.
“Content creators view children’s programming as a tool for cultural transformation, not merely a reflection of existing norms,” said CWA. “Netflix is not merely reflecting social change, it is an active driver” that has contributed to “the surge in LGBTQ identification among adolescents.”
CWA and other groups claim young people have fallen for a “transgender ideology” and argue if there are fewer streaming programs featuring LGBTQ characters, there will be fewer LGBTQ Americans.
Supporters of the LGBTQ community agree representation of these characters has increased, but they see that as a good thing. For younger gay or lesbian people to see themselves portrayed on TV in a positive light and not as a negative caricature has enormous mental health benefits, researchers have found.
These portrayals also help advance community acceptance of LGBTQ people, other research has found.
Evangelical Christians, however, do not want to advance acceptance because they generally believe being gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender is sinful.
The Heritage Foundation has battled against acceptance of homosexual and transgender Americans on many fronts, including education (“Stop Sexualized Ideology in Schools”) and medicine (“Hold the Gender Industrial Complex Accountable”).
“Protecting children’s innocence during their formative years is arguably the most important action our nation can take for the next generation,” said Heritage Action.
To that end, they believe parents should be warned in advance about content they might find objectionable to their worldview. This mirrors attempts to remove certain books from libraries that conservative parents don’t want their children to see.
In 1996, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act, which required that parents be warned when children’s entertainment contains violent, sexual or harmful programming. Congress gave TV networks an option: They could create their own oversight board or Congress would do it for them.
The industry elected to police itself, creating a TV Oversight Management Board and developing the TV Parental Guidelines, which warned when content could be inappropriate for different age groups.
Critics like Focus on the Family now say that system is antiquated and “fails to adequately account for sensitive content today.”
In response, the Trump administration’s FCC recently sought public comment on the ratings system. The window for public comments closed June 22.
“Recently, parents have raised concerns that controversial gender identity issues are being included or promoted in children’s programs without providing any disclosure or transparency to parents,” the FCC said. “The industry guidelines that parents rely on are rating shows with transgender and gender nonbinary programming as appropriate for children and young children, and doing so without providing this information to parents, thereby undermining the ability of parents to make informed choices for their families.”
GLAAD charged the FCC with “targeting LGBTQ stories,” saying, “They are trying to control what you see on television. This government overreach is dangerous to the existence of an independent and free media.”
“Our lives should not be equated with content that is violent, explicit or involves drug use,” said GLAAD, which accused the FCC of “a clear pattern of pressuring TV networks to comply with the political agenda of the federal government.”
Human Rights Campaign said content warnings that specifically single out LGBTQ people are “unnecessary, unhelpful and discriminatory.”
“They do not serve to inform parents or guardians; they serve to further a strategic political agenda that has targeted a minority for exclusion from public view. Requiring a content warning based solely on the identity of a character establishes a dangerous precedent, and one with a troubling historical context.”