Does TV guide? If so, where?

Watching nighttime television is a real experience nowadays. About two hours of tv a week is average in my home, excluding news shows, so when I watched some prime time tv, I was in for an education. Viewing outside my regular fare, I was really surprised by the number of shows dealing with issues of homosexuality that were aired on one channel in one night. In fact, every show I watched touched on the subject in one way or another. There was, of course, Will and Grace, which used profanity and abusive name-calling (aimed at their friends, men calling one another b****, mind you)like no other show I have watched on tv, ever. Then The Apprentice, in which the contestants had to create a tv commercial, one of which used pornographic and homosexual innuendo that was NOT well received by the executives, who had planned on selling soap.

Last was ER, which used drama to address this serious and painful issue, and dealt intelligently with the effects of intolerance and/or acceptance by people of faith, both gay and straight. A lesbian daughter finally meets her birth mother after a long search and discovers her mother is a down-home Christian, singing with her church choir in the area. The issue is whether or not to tell her mother about her lifestyle. She does and it is just as she fears. Her mother tells her that homosexuality is wrong.

She tells her mother "Why do you people hate us? When there are really bad things in the world, like drugs and abuse, why do you say "better watch out for those lesbians, they're going to upset our ideal lifestyle...?" or words to that effect.

Her mother assures her that God loves her, argues against homosexuality, and then they part ways.

If the issue is intolerance, then at least both characters were intolerant. The daughter comes back to her mother's hotel later and says "Can you accept me just as I am?" The mother says "I can love you, no matter who you are." The daughter says "I don't want love without acceptance," hugs her and leaves to the choral music "Just as I am." Interesting choice of hymns. What does that mean, exactly?

This issue is a hot button for our culture, and I almost did not write about it. I seek to hurt or offend no one, but I felt compelled to point out how I feel as a Christian I am to address homosexuality.

Biblically, homosexuality is a sin. There are lots and lots of sins. We are born with a nature to sin, and so are condemned already in the sight of God. Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." It is our sin nature that separates us from God, it is not God that separates Himself from us. But God does not tell us to persecute others for their sin. Leviticus 19:17'You (A)shall not hate your fellow countryman in your heart; you may surely reprove your neighbor, but shall not incur sin because of him."

What the mother did in this case was absolutely biblical. God makes his stance on homosexuality very clear. 13'(L)If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act." We are not haters of sinners, being sinners ourselves, but we are not supposed to "incur sin because" of another. To accept another person's choice to sin is to sin ourselves. It doesn't mean hate them, but it does mean not to accept sin.