March 7, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Kirk Cameron is an evangelical Christian who has carved a niche for himself as an actor in faith-based productions like Fireproof. These films are both entertaining and meaningful, with a rich spiritual and unapologetic Christian message that is, frankly, not only evanescent in Hollywood today but virtually extinct.
This week on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight Cameron dared to say that he thought homosexuality was “unnatural” and that marriage should be limited to the legal bond of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all same-sex unions.
“Marriage is almost as old as dirt, and it was defined in the garden between Adam and Eve. One man, one woman for life till death do you part. So I would never attempt to try to redefine marriage. And I don’t think anyone else should either,” Cameron said.
The remarks engendered a swift counterattack by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), which apparently is unaware that Cameron has continued to work as an actor and producer since he was a featured player on the sitcom Growing Pains. Said GLAAD’s senior director of programs Herndon Graddick, “In this interview, Kirk Cameron sounds even more dated than his 1980s TV character. Cameron is out of step with a growing majority of Americans, particularly people of faith who believe that their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters should be loved and accepted based on their character and not condemned because of their sexual orientation.”
OK, so you would not expect an organization that is actively pushing the gay agenda to either ignore Cameron’s comments or even to agree to disagree. Cameron said nothing about not loving gays and lesbians, but for GLAAD, anyone not of the fervent conviction that homosexuality is as natural as the rain falling is trapped in a medieval mindset and hopelessly out of step with progressive thought.
But does being “out of date” have anything to do with being right or wrong on an issue? For that matter, one could say that the current trend towards acceptance and promotion of homosexual behaviour is in itself a throwback to the attitudes and opinions of ancient pagan civilizations where same-sex couplings were not only an acceptable part of sexual expression but embedded in religious rites.
The demands of GLAAD and other similarly focussed groups that Christians accept homosexual activity may well be a rooted in the approval of that distant coupling of sex and religion, in a desire to have organized religion today sanction that behaviour just as it was in the distant past by pagan cultures. GLAAD desires a return to a religious conformity that might well be described as strangely nostalgic.
The “people of faith” that Graddick describes as accepting any sexual orientation must surely belong, as far as Biblically-based Christianity is concerned, to any apostate church that flatly rejects the clear moral dictates that may be found in preponderance in both the Old and New Testaments. Furthermore, since “sexual orientation” is a term that can describe anything, and therefore ultimately means nothing, do we really believe that any sexual urge may be satiated, that any sexual calling must be applauded, that any sexual – dare we say – perversion is permissible?
Clearly we have reached a new level in society’s attitudes towards homosexuality. The yardstick of political correctness has subtly but undeniably been stretched from tolerance to acceptance to promotion – and now it is insistence, insistence that religious opinion and “people of faith” accept the homosexual lifestyle without question, without remorse, without further comments—especially to networks like CNN. At least no one – yet – is suggesting that Cameron should not be allowed to work in films because his opinions are too odious and corrosive for public viewing.
This insistence is profoundly totalitarian in scope and intent while being completely at odds with basic democratic freedoms – in particular a certain freedom which we used to have called freedom of religion. No one can demand that people think in a certain way or that the only acceptable “people of faith” are the ones who won’t disagree or “condemn” your lifestyle choices.
It is inspiring for some to enjoy the philosophical concurrence of an insouciant religious establishment, to never have one’s moral assumptions or lifestyle choices questioned. It is also the spiritual environment described by St. Paul in I Timothy 3:1 when “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits…”
David Krayden is the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies, an independent, not-for-profit institution dedicated to the advancement of freedom and prosperity through the development and promotion of good public policy.