You may recall that earlier this year Gary McCullough, director of Christian Newswire, declared that adding Ellen DeGeneres as a host to “American Idol” would doom the show because Americans reject “perverse behavior” and “young girls and their traditional families are uncomfortable with the topic of homosexuality.”
He followed that up May with an “I told you so” statement claming that the show’s declining popularity was due to DeGeneres’ homosexuality, which was driving away “a significant market share of parents and teens who used to watch the show together, [as] mom and dad decided that the subtle promotion of an ‘alternate lifestyle’ to their kids was not worth the entertainment trade off.”
Well, now that DeGeneres has announced that she will be leaving the show, McCullough is back to take a victory lap:
There is a moral to the story of this DeGeneres-Idol saga. There is a limit to what Christian viewers will tolerate, and I am using “Christian” in the broadest of definitions. The revenue generating ability of television programming that promotes homosexuality has its limits. If primetime network programming becomes indistinguishable from HBO and Showtime someone else will take ownership of the family-friendly entertainment market.
The encouragement I take from the firing of DeGeneres is that someone in Hollywood understands what I have been saying; that the promotion of homosexuality and the production of family entertainment do not mix. There is money to be made and there are cultural battles to be fought; if you try to do both you will lose twice. That has been my business advice.
Cultural battles have two sides, one of which is immoral. Choose to fight on the immoral side of a cultural battle and any victory you experience will only be temporary. That is my spiritual advice.
