Here's an excerpt from an article describing the show...
"But thanks to series producer WGBH (which is providing the episode to any PBS stations that want to air it), I had scored a copy. I popped it in my VCR, pulled down the shades, and took a peek. Go figure! This episode is pretty typical of Postcards From Buster, a gentle, informative series about a camcorder-toting cartoon bunny who explores different cultures and communities, then reports back to his friends at home (as well as to his 4- to 8-year-old audience) through live-action video "postcards" showing the people he meets.
For "Sugartime!" (which refers not to sex, gay or straight, but to maple sugaring), Buster went to Vermont. There he visited a group of cute kids who ride bikes, jump in the hay, make chocolate chip cookies, cozy up to a bonfire, and show him how syrup begins as sap from maple trees. As usual, this episode, filmed last March, centers on youngsters. But glimpsed as well are the parents, two couples who seem altogether unremarkable. Except they're all women. This detail scarcely escapes Buster's notice. When one little girl refers to her mother and stepmother, Buster remarks, "That's a lot of moms!" Nothing more on the subject is said or done, however. And no one breathes the L word.
But by daring to include two of the nation's 168,000 gay-parented households (joining Pentecostal Christians, Muslims, and Mormons among those represented on the series), Buster was busted. "Congress's and the department's purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children," Spellings wrote PBS head Pat Mitchell. (The Department of Education anteed up $5 million, two thirds of the budget for the series's 40 episodes.) "Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode." Focus on the Family founder James Dobson agrees. "At its heart, the issue before us is the 'sexual reorientation' and brainwashing of children by homosexual advocacy groups," Dobson wrote on his Web site. Of course, no child watching this episode is any more likely to be brainwashed into becoming gay than into copying Buster and growing rabbit ears.
The danger, such as it is, lies elsewhere. The episode's two couples--Karen and Gillian, and their friends Tracy and Gina--come across as perilously likable people and loving parents. They're awfully hard to distinguish from acceptable folks. It might be tricky, then, to convince a child who's "exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode" that these women should be demonized for being who they are. As usual, information is a threat to blind prejudice. "
