Thursday, August 26, 2010

'Modern' Warfare

On Monday, I blogged about a megachurch in Asheville, N.C., that is modeling a campaign for a sermon series it is offering after the television show "Modern Family." A reader in the area, Mike, alerted me to a mailing that had gone out, and he expressed anger about a church that encourages discrimination against LGBT people trading in on the pro-inclusion themes of the ABC hit. By Tuesday, Russ Bowen, a reporter for the ABC News affiliate WLOS had contacted me to see if I could put him in touch with Mike, and I'm happy to say it all came together, with Bowen filing this compelling report. While I'm not sure there is an actual "firestorm" of controversy brewing just yet, I think it's great that our concerns are being heard in areas outside of the major cities.
   
Click HERE to watch "Modern Controversy": Biltmore Baptist Church is using the "Modern Family" theme for a series of family oriented sermons. But, gay bloggers across the nation say the pastor there is twisting the ABC television show's theme of acceptance for its own purposes. The pastor says his church is not anti-gay but his church believes homosexuality is a sin.

6 comments:

Mike in Asheville said...

Hi Kenneth, thanks for posting my husband's handiwork. (BTW, I got him hooked on your blog a couple years ago when we were living in Brooklyn, my comments then I was using "Mike in Brooklyn"; and yes, we're both Mikes).

Cheers.

Danny in WeHo said...

This had better simmer down before those English folk at BBC see that this church has stolen their network name, too!

Paul said...

In keeping with the theme of taking away the wrong message: Pastor Bruce is kind of hot.

Anonymous said...

Maybe the producers of Modern Family, ABC, the BBC network and the Biltmore House in Asheville could ALL get a suit going for copyright infringement.
I wouldn't want the good name of anything I was involved with to be misappropriated and associated with a group that preaches bigotry.

GV said...

Maybe the producers of Modern family, ABC, the BBC network and Asheville's real Biltmore House could all sue jointly for the multi-faceted copyright infringement.
A lot of people wouldn't want the good name of their own projects misappropriated and associated with a group that teaches bigotry.

Michael said...

Is Russ gay friendly?Hes very handsome.