Who said Kirk Cameron would never work in this town again?
The National Organization for Marriage has released a video labeling Kirk Cameron "one of America's most important champions of marriage," an apparent tip of the hat in response to his vocal opposition to same-sex unions.
To put it mildly, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation thinks Cameron and NOM are full of crap.
"Kirk Cameron and the anti-gay activists at NOM are making a claim that Americans know to be false," GLAAD President Herndon Graddick said in a statement following the release of the NOM video. "This rhetoric won't work anymore. Communities across this country love and cherish their LGBT neighbors, friends and family members. This includes people in families headed by LGBT people. Their implication that LGBT couples can't create loving and stable homes is not only outdated and irrelevant; it's designed specifically to hurt those families."
"If we want a great future in this world, we have to take God at his word," the former Growing Pains star says in the "Champion of Marriage" video, "and God makes it really clear that society and civilization is really held together by the glue of families...It needs to be a home that is full of faith, and in order to have that kind of a home, marriages need to be strong because that's ultimately going to serve as the foundation for our family, right, a strong marriage? When a man and a woman come together and say 'I do,' they are committing for a lifetime to love each other and to model what love is and what forgiveness is and what joy is to their kids."
Seemingly everything Cameron said about marriage should go for anyone taking the vows, regardless of the sex of the spouses, but...apparently NOM thinks that covenant is exclusive to heterosexual couples. The group's latest press release praises GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's stance opposing the legalization of gay marriage.
"Governor Romney has it exactly right that marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a pro-family policy that uplifts American families, especially in the black community," NOM president Brian Brown said in a statement released today. "The strongest supporters of traditional marriage include African Americans, 70 percent of whom have voted for traditional marriage. We commend Governor Romney and the rank and file members of the NAACP for recognizing the importance of traditional marriage."
For the record, NAACP leadership endorsed President Barack Obama's statement in support of gay marriage back in May.
Back in March, following the media furor over Cameron calling gay marriage "detrimental to so many foundations of our civilization," NOM drew up strategy documents (that were subsequently obtained and posted online by GLAAD) calling for like-minded celebs and pretty people to join its cause.
"Hollywood with its cultural biases is far bigger than we can hope to be," the document read, per GLAAD. "We recognize this. But we also recognize the opportunity—the disproportionate potential impact of proactively seeking to gather and connect a community of artists, athletes, writers, beauty queens and other glamorous non-cognitive elites across national boundaries."