A children’s cartoon has a same-sex wedding, Alabama bans the episode…

The first episode of the 22nd series of children’s programme Arthur features the character Mr Ratburn marrying his aardvark partner, Patrick.

But APT instead ran an old episode, and announced it had no plans to show the premiere.

Programming director Mike McKenzie said broadcasting it would break parents’ trust in the network.

In a statement, Mr McKenzie said “parents trust that their children can watch APT without their supervision”, and that children “younger than the ‘target’ audience” might watch without parental knowledge.

Substitute teacher Misty Souder told news website AL.com that she and her daughter were disappointed the episode did not run and had contacted the network about it.

“I never thought I’d be going to battle for a gay rat wedding, but here we are,” she said.

A 2018 Gallup poll showed 46% of people in Alabama identified as conservative, second only to Mississippi among all 50 states.