Cosmopolitan magazine, known for its brazen articles about sex and relationships, recently featured an article about "the 16 Biggest HGTV Scandals of All Time."
HGTV, a TV channel that features shows about home improvement, gardening, crafts, and remodeling, is hardly the station one would look at for scandals. But writer Laura Beck said "Fixer Upper" stars Chip and Joanna Gaines' declaration that homosexuality and gay marriage are sins can be considered as such.
"Last month, BuzzFeed wrote about the Gaineses' affiliation with a non-denominational evangelical church whose pastor, Jimmy Seibert, opposes homosexuality and gay marriage," Beck wrote.
For Beck, that affiliation is a "scandal." But Christian writer Daniel Payne would beg to disagree. In an open letter published by The Federalist, he criticised Cosmo for its "insulated and insular bubbles of dime-store oral sex advice" and stressed that there is nothing scandalous about the Gaines' affiliation with the church.
"A Christian church's opposition to gay marriage isn't 'scandalous;' it's not shocking; it's not even mildly remarkable within the context of the religion itself. It's just...Christianity," he said.
He accused Beck of being "ignorant" and "aggressively parochial." Given the virtue of Cosmo readers, Payne said it's no wonder its journalist is unfamiliar with the inscrutable beliefs of the Christian people.
"It is an intensely silly thing to witness, chiefly because, if taken to its logical extreme, there would be no end to the breathless scandal-mongering and obsessive paranoia," he said.
Payne is even impressed with the way the Gaines couple handled the "scandal." The two "dealt with this low-grade muckracking with grace, asking only that their fans refrain from harassing the third-rate journalists who were probably trying to destroy their careers," he said.
Payne added that it's a good thing the whole thing did not blow out of proportion, and it seems that people are getting sick of the "tawdry style of liberal activist journalism."
