BERKELEY, Calif.—Fifteen young men in this hotbed of activism gathered at an Indian restaurant on a recent Sunday and made an appeal: Could the waiter please switch the TV from the news to "My Little Pony"?

Then the men heaped their plates with curry and clustered around tables to absorb the Pony cartoon, share trivia about the characters and play show-and-tell with the various plastic Pony toys they had brought along.

Meet...