My Family is Different - My gut reaction to the Nick News Special was to be startled by the rhetoric of the Christian children on the panel, referring to "homosexual acts" and speaking authoritatively, as though they had read, studied and fully understood every word of the Bible. Intolerance is a virtue that is taught, not born.

When Clayton, the fashionably dressed young man sitting next to Rosie O'Donnell says "personally, i believe that [teaching about homosexuality in schools] is wrong" and cites examples of the "best" kinds of families, I'm disturbed, but not necessarily because of his message. My disbelief comes from the fact that he's only barely a teenager! How is a child able to speak with fully-formed convictions on any topic yet? At that age, you should still be learning about the world and the people that inhabit it. It's disheartening to see the way some of the children spout off the party line about tolerance from their churches, without having any real world interaction with families that are different from their own.

The show is a good jumping off point for families to have discussions about tolerance, to start a dialogue for households that may not know any gay people but also haven't taught their children about homosexuality and the Bible from an early age. Not that I had any doubt that the program would air, but kudos to Viacom for taking the issue of tolerance to the airwaves.