One of the lead characters in the Canadian/American animated educational television series for Kids, Arthur, has come out as gay.
Mr. Ratburn who is the teacher of the main character Arthur was revealed as being gay in the first episode of the 22nd season of the show titled: Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone.
In the episode, Arthur and his friends Buster, Muffy, and Francine assume that Mr. Ratburn is getting married to a woman named Patty (Jane Lynch) after they run into the two talking to each other.
The group of friends who are upset by the thought of Mr. Ratburn getting married to Patty as they don’t like her, decide to crash the wedding.
THowever, upon gatecrashing the wedding, they learn that Mr. Ratburn isn’t marrying Patty but is, in fact, marrying Patrick who owns the local chocolate shop, and is the brother of Patty.
This isn’t the first time that Arthur has covered same-sex unions on the show; in the 2005 spinoff show, Postcards from Buster, a lesbian couple in Vermont was featured during the episode “Sugartime!”
However, at the time, the publicly-funded episode sparked criticism from then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, which led to it getting pulled from PBS.
