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LOS ANGELES, January 27, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – It’s been called the “Gay Equality Anthem” by homosexual activists:  Macklemore’s rap hit “Same Love,” written to support the legalization of gay ‘marriage’ in Washington state in 2012, reached number eleven on the Billboard Top 100 in the U.S. and number one in both Australia and New Zealand.

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“Same Love” was nominated for Song of the Year at Sunday night’s Grammy Awards, but lost out to Lorde’s “Royals.” But it’s the on-stage performance by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis that had people talking Monday morning, after 33 couples – many of them gay and lesbian – got legally ‘married’ during the performance, with rap artist Queen Latifah presiding.  

Both the song and the mass ‘wedding’ aired live on CBS during primetime.  The performance was set on a stage that looked like a church, complete with altar, and Macklemore and Lewis were accompanied by a gospel choir.   

“This song is a love song not for some of us, but for all of us,” said Queen Latifah as she began the ‘ceremony.’  “Strip away the fear, underneath it's all the same love.”

The audience of mostly music industry insiders at the Staples Center rose to their feet with thunderous applause as the participating couples came down the aisles to lyrics that bashed Christian conservatives:

 “The right-wing conservatives think it’s a decision/And you can be cured with some treatment and religion/Man-made rewiring of a predisposition/Playing God, aw naw here we go/America the brave still fears what we don't know/And God loves all his children, is somehow forgotten/But we paraphrase a book written 3500 years ago.” 

But not everyone was pleased by CBS’s decision to air the ‘weddings.’  Pro-family leaders condemned what they said was a divisive political stunt designed to shame those who hold traditional views on marriage and make support for marriage redefinition appear mainstream.

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“Hollywood, the entertainment industry and the political left just can’t get enough ‘gay,’” American Family Association president Tim Wildmon told LifeSiteNews.  “They are force feeding the American public. We have ‘Kinky Boots’ which are cross-dressers in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, we got a homosexual wedding float in the Rose Bowl Parade and now we are pushing ‘gay marriage’ during the Grammy Awards. President Obama now has invited an NBA player to sit in the gallery for the State of the Union speech precisely because he has sex with other men and is proud of it.  These people don’t just want acceptance, they want middle America’s approval.”

“It is unfortunate that CBS and the Grammys would allow an entertainment awards show to be so shamelessly exploited in support of a radical social and political agenda,” Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council, told LifeSiteNews.  “It’s ironic that these ceremonies accompanied a song, ‘Same Love.’ The government has no legitimate interest in ‘love’ alone, but it does have an interest in encouraging procreation and mother-father households.”

The on-air same-sex “weddings” were the brainchild of Grammy producer Ken Ehrlich, who told the New York Times he got the idea from his lesbian daughter, who told him that Macklemore and Lewis sometimes allow couples to propose marriage onstage during concert performances of “Same Love.”   Ehrlich said he suggested the duo “[take] it a step further with a full wedding.”

But Ehrlich denied that it was just a stunt.  “We’re serious about this,” he told the Times.  He added that while he personally believes marriage should be redefined to include same-sex couples, “I would not want to make a broad statement that it represents the views of the [National] Academy [of Recording Arts and Sciences] or the CBS television network.”

But Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the conservative Media Research Center, strongly disagreed. 

“They can say this is not a stunt, but that's exactly what it is, a piece of musical agitprop to mock the traditional values of conservative American Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others,” Graham wrote on the NewsBusters blog. “Entertainers never want to have a debate, just a series of arrogant ‘statements’ with no opportunity for a conversation as they flush the Bible on national TV.”