Christianity,  News

Piers Morgan Goes at Guests on the Gay Marriage Issue

If you are to appear on the Piers Morgan program, there is no need to be surprised or unprepared for the gay marriage questions. If he views you as a Christian, the questions will come whether you want them to or not. Whether or not it has anything to do with the reason you’re on the program, he’s going to ask, and he’s going to do it in such a way that casts you personally in a negative light. Clearly this is an important issue to him, and he wants to discredit anyone who believes what the Bible says about human sexuality. He’s done it over and over again (see videos below).

Morgan has done this so many times that some patterns are emerging. So here is a short list of questions to be prepared for:

1. What do you think about gay marriage?

2. Do you think homosexuality is a sin?

3. What would you do if your own son told you he was gay?

4. Your views are bigoted, aren’t they?

5. Don’t you think that we should adapt the Bible to fit the modern world?

Be prepared to give an answer, and be ready for a bucket full of scorn. Because he’s going to give it to you.

August 31, 2011 – Rick Santorum

March 2, 2012 – Kirk Cameron

October 9, 2011 – Chris Christie

Christie says that in spite of his church’s teaching, “I don’t look upon someone who’s homosexual as a sinner.”

March 5, 2012 – Michele Bachmann

March 9, 2012 – Mark Driscoll (see transcript below)

The video excerpt above does not include the section on homosexuality. But you can read the transcript here.

October 24, 2011 – Herman Cain

October 5, 2011 – Joel Osteen

August 17, 2011 – Christine O’Donnell

19 Comments

  • Paul

    1) You always have the choice to not appear on his show.

    2) I think we’d agree that it was completely unfair to ambush Kirk Cameron about the issue. However, it is essentially a policy question when it’s asked of presidential candidates. And double that if you’re the governor of the world’s largest suburb (New Jersey) which has never really been known as a bastion of conservative values.

    3) re: the idea that people should adapt the Bible to fit the modern world – I think that’s an unfair way to frame that question, whether it be by an unbeliever that clearly has no use for the Bible, or by a conservative commentator looking for cheap points. However, it is a reasonable question to ask if the Bible is a living document. Even if that is the case, the counter question becomes, is someone’s salvation at stake if they believe that Christ is their Lord and Savior but sees the Bible through a modern lens?

    • Paul

      Hey Denny – seriously, all left vs. right, you’re afraid of my comments and have to moderate them stuff aside, I’d love a professor’s take on that last question that I asked.

        • Paul

          well, that’s the question.

          Clearly, the constitution HAS to be a living document. The end result of it not being one is that it will have to fail. A government has to adapt to the times that it is in. It must.

          On the other hand, asking whether or not the Bible is a living document or not is a question I’ve been struggling with (for lack of a better term) for a while now. I see no point in the fundamentalist point of view. I think it’s too archaic and ultimately self-defeating. However, I also see problems with people that just keep jettisoning parts of the Bible that they just don’t like – I see the red-letter Christian movement as absolute silliness.

          BUT – here’s the question – do we take into account the fact that the kosher laws were written with their times in mind? Was Peter told to rise and eat solely because Jesus had fulfilled the covenant (it’s nice to think that) or was it also because in the thousand years between the original covenant and Jesus’ crucifixion, the world had learned that a medium rare pork chop was a no-no? And, do we do the same for Paul’s admonitions to the different churches that he wrote to? I’ve seen it said that Paul talked about covering women’s heads in church as a cultural thing as opposed to a commandment from God. If that’s the case, then couldn’t the same be said about a woman speaking in church? Or is speaking in church ok, but teaching isn’t? If these are cultural caveats, or could be seen as such, should they hold any water today?

          And I know that’s a slippery slope. But better to get a solid answer from someone that knows why he believes what he believes than some of the yahoos on my side of the fence.

      • Chris

        “is someone’s salvation at stake if they believe that Christ is their Lord and Savior but sees the Bible through a modern lens?”

        Possibly, yes.

        When Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say I am?” Peter responded, “You are the Christ.” However, when Jesus started teaching them what that meant (He must suffer, be rejected, die and rise again) Peter rebuked Him because what Peter thought the “Christ” was did not match up with what Jesus was indeed telling them about his identity and work.

        So, just because someone says, “Jesus is my Savior and Lord” does not mean they have saving faith. We must know what they truly believe about who Jesus is and what He came to do. If their “modern lens” of viewing the Bible rejects the essential truths of our faith, then their salvation is definitely at stake.

    • Jason

      Meaningless modifier alert.

      “the Bible is a living document”

      What does that mean?

      “sees the Bible through a modern lens”

      What does that mean?

      • Paul

        Meaningless? not really.
        Foreign to your worldview? possibly.

        They both essentially mean the same thing – should we read the Bible word for word, or should we do as the Jews have done with the Torah, and read it in the context of the modern world? Certainly, as I said above, it can lead to some slippery slopes, but it also makes us question (which is never a bad thing) how we should approach issues in a modern context.

  • Joe Rigney

    Denny,

    After watching the Kirk Cameron clip a couple of days ago, I was thinking about how I would answer #3 (What would you do if your son told you he was gay?). In addition to saying something like “I’d reaffirm my love for him and I’d have lots of questions about what’s been going on in his life, what’s his attitude toward these desires, etc”, I think I’d turn the question around and ask Piers, “What would you do if your son came home and said he’d become an evangelical Christian who now believes the Bible’s teaching regarding homosexuality?” Or “What if your homosexual son came home and said that he’d been converted at a Southern Baptist Church and is now committed to living celibately and praying that God would deliver him from homosexual desire?” I think the response would be illuminating.

  • Tom Fillinger

    The issue needs to be framed around people as created in the image of God. Do we need to incorporate or accommodate economic issues because times change? Yes. Do we need to acknowledge technology issues? Yes.

    Homosexuality is an issue of personhood. All people are created in God’s image and that image must never be perverted by conduct that is clearly a violation of His image based on His declaration(s) on such conduct.

  • Nathan

    There is only one of those people that I think the homosex / same-sex marriage question could be counted as inappropriate. Five of them are politicians or political wannabes and same-sex marriage is one of the hottest political issues being fought over today. Two are pastors which should be given a chance to present biblical reasoning — if they can’t, that’s their problem, not Morgan’s. Cameron is a Christian actor and so that may not be all that pertinent, although he is a cultural figure and this is a cultural issue. Morgan’s question was more along the lines of how Cameron leads his family, so that wasn’t that far out of bounds because Cameron is a family man.

    Morgan may have an agenda, but he’s hasn’t been all that inappropriate in grilling these people about such an important subject. Isn’t that what he’s supposed to do? Making someone defend their position isn’t a terrible thing…

  • Christiane

    Piers is British . . . his country is very protective of its minorities, and in ways, more protective of how they are treated. In short, what might be seen as some in this country as ‘free speech’ and ‘freedom of religion’ would be interpreted in Great Britain as ‘harassment of a minority’. The British have laws against what they see as undo harassment of minority groups. For example, the Dutch speaker Geert Wilders who is a guest of many conservative churches, was banned for a time from Great Britain. They saw him as preaching extreme anti-Islamic rhetoric.

    The United States and Britain are very close allies and many of our people have roots in the British Isles . . . but we are two separate countries, and Piers is very much a Britain. Of course, he would see things differently.

  • Derek

    The Chris Christie interview is very revealing about both Christie and Morgan. They both say that they are sincere Catholics in that sit down. Christie goes on to say that his Catholicism “informs part of who I am, but it does not rule who I am” before he goes on to talk about how he does not believe a gay person acting on his homosexuality is sinning.

    What a day of shock and terror it will be for both of these men when they realize that God does not give us the option of letting Christ “inform us, but not govern us”. Both of these men are doing the same thing Thomas Jefferson did by creating his own Bible, literally cutting out the parts of Scripture that he didn’t like or agree with.

    If someone wants to know what idolatry looks like in a modern context, the interview with Morgan and Christie is a perfect example.

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