The Sexuality Blog: Ezekiel Mutua threatens to ban the Disney channel because of its LGBT friendly show “Andi Mack”

Ezekiel Mutua

At this point you can almost depend on the Kenyan director of the Kenyan Film Classification Board, KFCB to be in the news for all the wrong reasons. This time around the Kenyan policy maker is leaving his usual small fry disputes to wade into bigger waters.

A few weeks ago, the Disney Channel announced it was taking a quantum leap in progressive television programming when it announced that its new television show Andi Mack  would feature a gay character, who would come out during the show. The show quickly became a hot topic on social media, drawing all sort of conversations about the motivations of Disney, and why they would want to do such a thing. Of course the usual accusations of ‘indoctrination by the west’ rose to the fore and before long, according to Mutua, families began to petition the Kenyan Film Certification Board to prevent Andi Mack from being shown on Kenyan cable television. Mutua responded with a public statement, alleging that he has informed the premium cable distributors in Kenya, Star Times Kenya, DSTV Kenya and GoTV Kenya, to either remove Andi Mack from their scheduled programming or face Disney Channel being banned in its entirety in the country.

While we wait to see how this will be implemented, can we just point out how ridiculous it is to try to force a cable television channel to take scheduled shows off the air?

The whole point of  cable television is tha unlike terrestrial television where you are forced to watch a regimented schedule of shows, Cable television gives the viewer the option of choice, you can either personally restrict the channel through parental control options if you don’t want your children to watch certain shows on the channel or opt out of paying for the channel altogether. Asking a cable channel to take a entire show off the air to suit your sensibilities shows yet again, that Ezekiel Mutua understands nothing about media, nothing about how human nature works and how to ensure that his personal beliefs/biases do not interfere with his job as a censor.

Kenya we hail thee.

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