Last week, a new reality show called Back to the Frontier premiered on HBOMax. As you may have guessed, it’s one of those reality shows where people have to go and live like they did in olden times. I did not see it, because when it comes to reality television, like Oscar the Grouch before me …
And we’ve still got two weeks left of Love Island UK (Team Shakira, obviously), so I was not chomping at the bit to watch some folks wear bonnets and die of cholera. But I may now have to watch it, out of pure spite, because every Christian right lunatic on the internet is losing their absolute shit over this show. Why? Because one of the three families participating is gay married couple Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs and their twin sons, Ethan and Lucas.
Now, you may be thinking, “Seriously? They’re het up because a television show on HBOMax, in the year 2025, has two men who are married to each other on it?” and yes — yes, they are. They’re very, very upset about it — most especially because it is being produced by Chip and Joanna Gaines.
Chip and Joanna Gaines became famous for fixing up houses on HGTV and also for being evangelical Christians, which is probably why I’ve not heard of them before today. Therefore, all of the worst people on earth — Michael Knowles, Allie Beth Stuckey, Franklin Graham, Matt Walsh, etc. — are feeling very betrayed and angry, even though the Gaines’ never explicitly said they hate gay people.
The Gaineses have responded to the situation with grace, defending their decision to not be horrible bigots.
According to Christianity expert Ben Shapiro, these two men are part of an evil Hollywood plot to normalize families that aren’t exactly like the families Ben Shapiro thinks should exist.
Shapiro also explained that the folks in the throes of this moral panic are not just upset by the fact that there’s a gay couple on a TV show, but also because the Gaineses have suggested that the moral panickers are “mean” for being angry about gay people being on television.
They are upset with the fact Chip is now sneering at them. He’s looking down his nose at them and suggesting that the real problem is not that he is violating his own faith standards by promulgating a set of values that is unChristian, but that he believes that Christians themselves, by objecting to that promulgation, are thus demonstrating that they are intolerant and vicious and mean. Objecting to the normalization of what Christians or Jews or anyone else considers to be sinful … that is not mean or intolerant. That is just saying there is a standard and the standard should be something that, if you purport to be an upholder of that standard, you should abide by.
It is, actually, both mean and intolerant. It doesn’t matter how often these people say “It’s not ‘mean and intolerant’ because it’s in the Bible and we’re just doing what’s in the Bible!” — it’s still mean and intolerant. It’s ridiculous to claim otherwise, especially since there are about 80 million other sins that Christians don’t seem to be nearly as concerned about.
Still, this was a sentiment echoed in the replies to the tweet above. Because sure! It’s perfectly fine and not mean or intolerant to demand that large swaths of people live in the shadows simply because you do not like who they love or the way they were born. Several also shared sentiments like “You glorify and justify sodomy while God destroyed 2 cities with fire and brimstone for it.” — which, actually, is an incredibly fucked up and horrible thing to do. I mean, I don’t believe it happened because I do not believe in God — and if I did, I sure wouldn’t pick one who murdered entire cities of people because he was mad about the kind of sex people were having — but it’s still weird to hear people saying that as if it was an admirable move on God’s part.
Though I do wonder if they know that oral sex is also a form of sodomy. So weird how you never, ever hear these same folks railing against heterosexual blowies. I think they should really get on that one. [Note: this point also occasioned a ChatCave discussion of whether it should be “blow job” or “blowjob,” recapitulating an editorial quandary going back decades. We decided “beejays” was funnier. — Dok]
Joel Berry, managing editor of The Babylon Bee, also shared his disappointment in the responses.
You’ll see no hate from me. I’m just sad. I can’t let my kids watch your show now, since I’m trying to protect their eyes and hearts from the lies of the world—lies you’re now participating in.
Also, filter out some of the online vitriol and consider taking to heart some of the substantive concerns and heartbreak from the Christians who make up your fanbase.
We should love the sinner—that doesn’t mean we celebrate and promote the sin and participate in the multibillion dollar industry dedicated to destroying the family.
Oh, the heartbreak! Don’t you see? They’re so sincerely heartbroken. They just want to protect their children from finding out that gay people exist. They’re sad about the imaginary “multibillion dollar industry dedicated to destroying the family.” You know, because other people’s families are definitely their business.
Noted cancel culture opposer Matt Walsh also announced that he is now forced to “cancel” the Gainses because putting a gay couple on a show is unbiblical DEI.
Walsh also, crudely enough, suggests that the men are probably molesting their sons by pointing out that gay people always adopt boys, and that this is “not something we’re supposed to notice or ask any questions about.” Aside from the fact that he appears to have pulled this vile factoid directly out of his ass, it seems worth noting that Hanna and Riggs actually used a surrogate.
Conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey railed at the Gaineses for thinking they are more loving and kind than God — who, let us remember, killed two cities full of people because they were having sex he did not approve of.
Former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch also weighed in, calling them fake Christians for “mainstreaming” gay marriage, which has now been legal in this country for a decade, and making it seem like Christian beliefs about it are “fringe.”
For what it’s worth, a 2023 Pew Survey found that 55 percent — a majority — of Christians are just fine with same-sex marriage.
While all of this has all been going on, the Gaineses have been busy raising $1 million for Texas flood victims.
This should be a wakeup call.
For the last few years, the Right has tried to make out that their opposition to “wokeness” and “cancel culture” was not that they wanted to be gross bigots, but that they just really loved free speech, that they thought the Left was being to strident and preachy, encouraging a culture of victimization. They didn’t oppose DEI because they wanted to discriminate against people or not include them, but because that was the real discrimination, somehow — not to mention completely unnecessary because people aren’t bigots anymore like they used to be.
It was never, ever about that. They did want to be gross bigots, they hate free speech, they wanted to be the strident and preachy people going around canceling everyone with whom they disagree — and, most of all, they wanted to be the victims. They wanted the world to say “My God, can you believe how cruelly the world treats these people? Putting people they don’t like on television?!?”
That was always it. Their opposition to “woke” was always just “we’d really prefer that people not notice when we try to oppress and marginalize other groups of people, or think we’re bad people just because we’re trying to do that.” That was it. And anyone who ever believed it was anything else (Hi, Bill Maher! Hi, Glenn Greenwald! Hi, Matt Taibbi! Hi, Matt Yglesias!) was a goddamn fool.
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