Peppa Pig's Lesbian Polar Bear Couple Brings Celebration and Condemnation

The popular British children's series, Peppa Pig, has introduced its first lesbian parent family, and viewers have both celebrated and condemned the move.

After years of calls and petitions for more LGBTQ+ characters on the show, a new episode titled "Families," which aired on Tuesday on Channel 5 in the U.K., introduced two lesbian polar bears.

Penny the Polar Bear draws a picture of her two mothers and tells Peppa Pig about her family, saying, "I'm Penny Polar Bear. I live with my mommy and my other mommy. One mommy is a doctor and one mommy cooks spaghetti. I love spaghetti."

The episode has so far divided viewers. Many celebrated the show's inclusion, saying that it is important for some children to see the representation.

"Peppa Pig has a new character with two moms and people say 'why,'" one Twitter user who goes by the name Brunette Bohemian wrote. "Because that's the reality for some children and representation matters. The end."

Another user wrote, "Well what do you know? My kids saw the first same-sex couple on Peppa Pig and the world didn't end. Penny Polar Bear said she lives with her 'mummy and her other mummy' and the four horsemen of the apocalypse didn't [come] storming over the horizon to bring humanity to a close."

British grassroots organization Safe Schools Alliance also tweeted, "Really nice to see age appropriate representation of same sex couples on @peppapig with Penny & her two mummies. We are loving One mummy is a doctor and one mummy cooks spaghetti. I love spaghetti.'"

Others were not so happy with the new characters. Republican Florida politician Lavern Spicer tweeted, "Peppa Pig is now teaching 3-year-olds about lesbian love. Need I say more."

"Peppa pig has or is about to introduce a new friend with mummy and mummy! I mean FFS ! I have no problem with LGBT etc but what I do have a problem with is this s**t being drummed into them when they're toddlers," one user wrote. "Stop confusing them and let them be kids."

American commentator and author Matt Walsh also shared the news on his Twitter, writing, "They put gay characters in the show because leftists made a petition demanding it."

In a follow-up tweet, he added, "Of course even though leftists literally petitioned for lesbians in a children's cartoon, that won't stop them from using the old 'Why do you care about this???' tactic on us."

In a response to Walsh, one user tweeted, "Dude grow up. modern children will be in classrooms with children who have gay parents. the appropriate time to talk about different family types would be around school age 4-6 so they're able to better understand their peers in class. that's peppa pig's audience."

A petition launched in 2019 to include a same-sex parent family on the show garnered almost 24,000 signatures at the time of publication and argued, "Children watching Peppa Pig are at an impressionable age, and excluding same-sex families will teach them that only families with either a single parent or two parents of different sexes are normal."

Newsweek reached out to Entertainment One, the production company for Peppa Pig for comment.