SpongeBob Square Pants is gay. At least that’s the latest word from several conservative Christian groups who have spoken out against the cartoon character for his appearance in a “pro-homosexual” video.

The music video, a remake of the 1979 hit “We Are Family,” will be sent to over 61,000 elementary schools in March to promote, of all things, tolerance.

Now critics are lashing out against the video’s message of “respect for diversity.” An influential conservative group called Focus on the Family was quoted as saying, “We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids. It’s a classic bait and switch.”

Brainwashing? Do you think so? Considering the fact that SpongeBob plays a minor part in the video, and that nowhere in the video is there any message about sexual identity, one has to wonder why a controversy even exists in the first place.

This uproar is nothing more than an overzealous section of the religious right promoting its anti-gay agenda.

While the Web site for the organization that created the video does have a tolerance pledge that pleads “respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race and sexual identity or other characteristics are different,” it is highly doubtful that the thousands of schoolchildren who watch the video will rush home, navigate to the Web site, read the pledge and join gay pride parades.

Even if they do, is that really so bad?

Last time I checked, tolerance was a good thing. It’s not like the foundation is promoting rampant sexual escapades or trying to increase drug use or encouraging kids to drop out of school.

No, the video is just trying to teach kids to be open-minded — hardly an “insidious” manipulation of young minds, unless somewhere along the line someone decided that young children shouldn’t respect and accept others.

The far right response to this is, of course, “It’s okay to teach tolerance, as long as you don’t teach tolerance for homosexuality.”

Now this may sound crazy, but nowhere in the dictionary do I find a definition for “selective tolerance” — you can’t claim to be tolerant if you refuse to respect part of the population’s perfectly reasonable lifestyle, can you?

“Tolerance itself can be a very dangerous word,” said the Rev. Terry Fox, a Southern Baptist pastor in Wichita, Kan. “Tolerance gives the public schools an avenue to literally brainwash our kids that every lifestyle is okay.”

No, Rev. Fox, I disagree. Tolerance gives public schools a way to teach kids that there are lifestyles other than the one they’ve been brought up in; that just because people live their life differently, they’re still human beings.

These people deserve the same rights and respect we afford everyone else (or at least, that we say we do).

To suggest that public schools encourage the adoption of “every lifestyle” is an insult to the teachers who are determined to develop the millions of young minds in America.

Tell me, where is the Rastafarian lifestyle promoted in the public school system?

How about the neo-Nazi views, or those of the Ku Klux Klan? Public schools in many areas have their faults, but endorsing tolerance for homosexuality and respect for others’ differences is not one of them.

Speaking of which, I still haven’t heard an actual argument for why homosexuality is wrong, although I have heard person after person say, “It’s wrong because it’s immoral.”

Since morality is a fairly ambiguous term with no exact boundaries, it seems just a little pretentious and even egotistical to force one’s views of the world onto everyone else.

Hey, isn’t there a word for that?

Oh, yeah — intolerance.

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