Conspiracy?

I am not a conspiracy buff. I don't buy into the "CIA wants to read your thoughts" alarms or really believe that the government has a covert base with aliens on it. In fact, you have to go a long way to convince me about almost any of the popular conspiracies that are floating about. So this is very painful for me to write. But ...

Why is it that there is so much on TV about homosexuals? More to the point, why is it that the constant, unabating message thrown over and over and over again at me in sitcoms, murder mysteries, and TV movies is "homosexual is normal and there's nothing immoral about it"? Every character that is against homosexual behavior is a loon, a psychopath, a dangerous or dubious individual. Many of them are supreme caricatures of the "religious right." In fact, almost as often as I get a message on TV about how there is nothing wrong with two people of the same gender having sex with each other, I get a message that all religious folks are crazy. Very often the message goes hand in hand.

I don't seem to be able to escape this constant barrage. For instance, Wednesday night there was Bones on Fox, a series about a forensic anthropologist who helps the FBI solve murders by examining bones. Last night's episode was about a murder in a church cemetery. And only a fool would believe in an invisible Being you couldn't touch, taste, or hear. What idiots, these believers in the supernatural. The normally capable FBI guy that handles the tough work was constantly belittled because he believed in God. Really intelligent people, you see, know better. What theism had to do with a forensic anthropologist solving a murder I don't really understand. It looked to me like gratuitous insults. Then there was Crossing Jordan, a series about a Boston medical examiner (Jordan Cavenaugh), and the murder cases the ME's office gets involved with. In this one, a murdered mother had her unborn baby cut out. Gruesome, to be sure. Why? Well, as it turns out, a whacko religious group hates homosexuals, and this mother was one. It was almost amusing to me the way that the "righteous" characters (the ones not against homosexual behavior and the ones who had no religious beliefs), bandy about Scripture references to put those nasty religious people in their places. (I bet you could guess one of them without even trying. "Judge not that you be not judged." Yeah, that had to be in there, ripped out of context, misused and abused.) This one was particularly gratifying because it hit both of the issues. It told us that homosexual behavior is perfectly moral and religious people are nuts. And that's just from what I saw in one night.

I don't like to think that there's an actual concerted effort here. And maybe there isn't. But I've heard too many times that there is nothing at all wrong with homosexual behavior and not even once that it might be immoral to think that it's an accident. And if I could find a religious character who is not portrayed as a loon, I might think that there was just an imbalance. But there appears to be no one who is willing to express the true Christian view on the topic or to portray a Christian as a thinking, caring individual. The only views we get expressed on the topics at hand are anti-Christian. In the Jordan episode last night they even clearly and cruelly mocked the tagline of so many, "Hate the sin, love the sinner." Yeah, that can't happen, right? Only a crazy person would suggest it could.

I spend a lot of time defending my faith. I have to provide reasons for what I believe. Those who disagree don't really have to offer rationale because, well, they're in the majority, and the majority rules. So it's only doubling the effort when I not only have to defend what I believe but also have to fend off what I don't believe. And when they gang up on us, making what appears to be a concerted effort to lie about our beliefs, our character, our perspectives ... well, I can see where those folks under the altar (Rev. 6:9-10) are coming from.