Gay Rights Campaign Targets Mississippi Christians

A new gay rights advertising campaign is targeting Christians in Mississippi. 

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a group that seeks to influence public opinion about the homosexual lifestyle, also known as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality, has released a television ad that features a 61-year-old self-described "Bible-believing born-again Christian.”

According to Christian Today, Mary Jane Kennedy, tells the story of her son coming out as a homosexual.

"Nothing in my life had ever prepared for that. I said, 'what's going to happen? This is going to tear our family apart. Your daddy will die.' It's hard to talk to somebody and tell them something that's going to break their heart. And it was the first time in my life that I've seen him cry," Kennedy says in the commercial.

"One of the main things that I want to happen, is to open the arms of Jesus Christ to people that have been pressed out of the church; we've closed our doors to people who need us the most.

"God calls us to love each other."

The group has released yet another commercial that features Representative Alyce Clarke, who is the first black woman to serve in Mississippi’s state legislature, who speaks about accepting and loving her homosexual son.

Baptist Press has released an in-depth look at the organizations efforts to alter public opinion on homosexuality. The report examines both the HRC's new campaign in Mississippi and its overall efforts during more than three decades of seeking to advance LGBT rights.

Such campaigns "will only continue," Russell D. Moore, president of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, says in the Baptist Press article. "Red states and Bible Belts do not provide adequate protection from these cultural trends."

Churches must preach and explain "a Christian vision of sexuality as rightly expressed in the one-flesh union of a man and a woman," Moore says, and "not stop at morals but go on to show how marriage is rooted in the Gospel, as a picture of Christ and the church." They also must be "those who call for repentance of sin and those who offer mercy to all who come to Christ in repentance and faith," he says.

Publication date: November 18, 2014