Jehovah’s Witnesses Release New Anti-LGBT Video For Children [Video]

The Jehovah’s Witnesses have recently released a video aimed at children that many people find disturbing. This is because the video is little more than anti-LGBT propaganda specifically designed to teach children to embrace homophobic beliefs. Its central theme is gay marriage and why it’s “wrong.”

As Gay Star News reports, the new children’s video released by the Jehovah’s Witnesses begins with a young girl alone in a classroom, taking her drawing of her family off of the wall. After she grabs her picture, complete with mommy, daddy, herself, and a faceless brother, she notices something that catches her eye.

It’s another student’s drawing, and it depicts two moms, something the Jehovah’s Witnesses teach is sinful. The little girl in the well-animated video goes to her mom for clarification.

When the girl approaches her mom about her classmate’s drawing, she tells her mom that her classmate has two moms and she “says they’re married.” She further explains that her teacher told her that it doesn’t matter so long as the couple is in love and is happy. Her mom, clearly a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has a different take on the matter.

“Well…people have their own ideas about what is right and wrong, but what matters is what Jehovah feels.”

According to the Jehovah’s Witnesses video, Jehovah “invented marriage,” which the Bible defines as only being valid between one man and one woman, that Jehovah has “his standards” to get into heaven and that those standards haven’t changed. The cartoon mom cites several verses in Genesis to buttress her point.

“It’s like going on an airplane. What would happen if someone wanted to bring something on the plane that wasn’t allowed? It’s the same with Jehovah. He wants us to be his friend, and live in Paradise forever!”

The mom also tells her daughter that “people can change” and encourages her to evangelize for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She then asks the little girl what she can do to spread the message of Jehovah to her little classmate who’d drawn two happy, smiling moms in her school art project.

The little girl responds that she can spread the word of Jehovah by telling her friend about “the paradise, and about the animals and about the resurrection.”

Check out the video in its entirety here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag_dXO6HUSY

The video obviously had a decent-size budget, and it is only one in a series of controversial children’s videos produced for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The series is supposedly aimed at teaching children about the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ scriptures and is called “Be Jehovah’s Friend!”

The newest of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ children’s videos was produced by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, which is a well-known Jehovah’s Witness affiliate.

As Pink News reports, this anti-LGBT video released by the Jehovah’s Witnesses has a lot of people crying foul, with Pink News saying that the video is being used by the Jehovah’s Witnesses as a tool to indoctrinate impressionable children into a homophobic mindset.

Reportedly, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have spent a lot of money creating this anti-LGBT cartoon as well as other videos in the “Be Jehovah’s Friend!” series.

One of the biggest objections to the video is that it is being used to target young children into bullying other children with their religious beliefs. Many religious groups in the U.S. jumped very vocally into the gay marriage debate in the last few years, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic decision last June that legalized same-sex marriage across the nation.

Since news of the anti-LGBT video broke, social media has blown up with people who both oppose and support it.

Jehovah Witness put out a video to support their beliefs… what's disturbing about that?

— wass (@StassDoll) May 4, 2016

How to begin teaching homophobia to little children… a jehovah witness video. https://t.co/lDsuxfFSlL

— Mediocre Taoist (@Taoist_Skeptic) May 4, 2016

This isn’t the first time the Jehovah’s Witnesses have gotten controversial national media attention in recent weeks. In addition to the death of (arguably) the religion’s most famous member, Prince, the Huffington Post recently addressed the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ practice of “shunning” former members of the faith, which goes as far as prohibiting families from speaking to their kin who are ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses. The practice of shunning is reportedly very wide-spread and can lead to utter estrangement and devastation between even the closest of family members.

“According to some estimates, perhaps 70,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses are disfellowshipped every year. They are publicly named at the Kingdom Hall. Their former congregation and all Witness family members are instructed by congregation elders to cut the disfellowshipped out of their lives, not even to exchange as little as a hello on the street or an occasional email.”

What do you think? Was this video released by the Jehovah’s Witnesses appropriate? Is it correct to indoctrinate children to call out classmates regarding their parents’ sexual orientation? Or did the Jehovah’s Witnesses cross a line with this “lesson”?

[Image Courtesy Of AP Photo/Seth Wenig]