Signs and Wonders: Good Luck Charlie gets two mommies

Good night, Charlie. The children’s television show Good Luck Charlie will introduce a lesbian couple to the program. The Disney Channel show had already planned to end on Feb. 16 after four seasons—enough to live on in syndication. A Disney spokesman told TV Guide the storyline was an attempt “to be relevant to kids and families around the world and to reflect themes of diversity and inclusiveness.” Not everyone feels included, though. The group One Million Moms said including the homosexual couple amounted to indoctrination because it normalized a practice children “are far too young to comprehend.”

In the line of fire. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 70 journalists died last year in the line of duty. Syria was the deadliest country, with 28 journalist deaths. Adding insult to injury has been the growing number of journalists who have been detained or censored for doing their work. The most recent example is the terror charge leveled against Al-Jazerra in Egypt. Imprisonment of journalists worldwide reached a record high in 2012, with 232 individuals behind bars on Dec. 1, an increase of 53 over its 2011 tally. Last year was the second-worst year on record, with 211 journalists imprisoned. Turkey was the worst offender.

Christian publishing’s new player. Amazon has created a Christian publishing imprint. Waterfall Press is the company’s foray into the $1.4 billion Christian publishing market. As Larry David said: “There’s big money in the god racket. Big money.” And that’s why secular publishers are diving in. But what happens when industry and ministry collide, or have different goals? With new imprints like Waterfall, and HarperCollins’ purchase of Thomas Nelson, we’ll likely get a chance to find out.

Messing with Texas. Texas has long been the tail that wags the dog in the textbook publishing industry. As one of the largest textbook buyers in the nation, publishers wanted to make sure that their books would be approved in Texas before going to market elsewhere. But Texas is overhauling its textbook approval process. The changes will limit the impact of citizens’ review boards. Teachers will have more say, especially when it comes to science and history textbooks. These changes likely will cause the textbook selection process to take a liberal lurch. Until now, Christian groups have been able to keep some of the more egregious ideological content out of the textbooks. The new process will give them less clout.