File under Old News: Überevangelist Kirk Cameron has at last shown us his true colors, and they aren’t pretty.
Cameron (by-now-)infamously informed Piers Morgan last week that homosexuality was “unnatural,” “detrimental,” and “ultimately destructive.” A set of opinions to which he is entitled, however misinformed.
But asked to describe a course of action for how to talk with his children if one of them told his father that he or she is gay, Cameron veered into self-destruction.
Morgan: So what do you do if one of your six kids says, “Dad, bad news, I’m gay”?
Cameron: … I’d sit down and I’d have a heart-to-heart with ’em, just like you would with your kids.
Morgan: If one of my sons said that, I’d say, “That’s great, son. Long as you’re happy.” What would you say?
Cameron: Well, I wouldn’t say “That’s great son, long as you’re happy.” I’m gonna say, “There’s all sorts of issues that we need to wrestle through in our life and just because you feel one way doesn’t mean we should act on everything that we feel.”
Morgan: And yet, some people would say that telling kids that being gay is a sin or getting married is a sin or whatever – that in itself is incredibly damaging and destructive and damaging in a country where seven states now have legalized it.
Cameron responded that Morgan was using a different standard of morality. That he (Cameron) acts under God’s standard. Not Piers’.
Anyway. We’ve all seen the clips by now. The point is you don’t abstract or moralize about standards when your children tell you something important about themselves that it took a lot of courage for them to come to you with. That’s just cruel.
It’s cruel because it’s an intimate moment between two people who are important to each other, and how in that moment the parent (nervous, inarticulate, and socially paranoid about how he or she will be perceived) makes it about him- or herself and not about the child.
And that’s true no matter what it is, whether it’s sexual identity or anything else.
You might think this would go without saying, but some have tried to lionize Cameron’s words, and you just can’t. They’re indefensible.