(Lifesite News) – The BBC, the publicly funded British TV and radio institution, has aired a kiss between two teenage girls in a program aimed at young children. “The Next Step,” a Canadian-produced teen drama series following the stories of aspiring young dancers, featured a kiss between teen actresses Dani Verayo and Molly Sanders in a show aired last week.
The show was broadcast via the CBBC brand, which the BBC says is for children ages six to 15 years old. Mainstream media reports have praised the scene as a “hopeful sign of breaking down even more barriers in television.” A BBC spokesperson told The Metro that “CBBC is proud to reflect all areas of children’s lives, including age-appropriate representation of same-sex relationships, across our factual and fictional output.”
U.K. newspaper The Mirror said that “BBC producers have been working to serve the LGBTQ+ community and provide representation in their shows.” In 2018, the BBC said that it wanted LGBT characters to be seen twice as much on TV as they are in real life within the next two years.
The teenage lesbian kiss scene was also praised by Stonewall, a U.K. LGBT activist group roughly equivalent to the Human Rights Campaign in the United States. Stonewall encourages British primary schools to embed gay, lesbian, and transgender themes and examples into every subject area and every grade level. READ MORE
