Despite making news earlier this year for calling the gay marriages performed at the Grammys an “all out assault on the traditional family,” Growing Pains‘ Kirk Cameron is — rather remarkably — scaling back his anti-gay marriage rhetoric.
“I think the greatest threat to marriage is not other people’s definition of marriage,” the evangelist told AL.com this weekend. “The church isn’t taking God’s definition of marriage seriously. It’s not other people sabotaging marriage that’s the problem.”
Kirk specifically pointed a finger at churchgoing “fornicators and adulterers,” saying they “will destroy marriages much more quickly than those outside the church.” He added Christians should be more focused on cleaning the house of hypocrites than on opposing gay marriage.
He even declined to criticize same-sex unions when directly asked. Instead, he redirected the conversation to what he called the biggest problem with modern marriages.
“Marriage is meant to be for life,” said Kirk, who is in the middle of a marriage seminar tour. “When we do things God’s way, there’s a blessing. The path of obedience is the path of blessing. Love is worth fighting for… The enemy is not your spouse. The enemy is in your own heart — it’s selfishness.”
In the past, Kirk’s been more open about his personal opinion of gay marriage. However, he criticized the media for taking his comments out of context.
“I love all people, I hate no one. When you take a subject and reduce it to something like a four-second sound bite and a check mark on a ballot, I think that that’s inappropriate and insensitive,” he said on Today in 2012, after Piers Morgan shared a clip of Kirk calling homosexuality “unnatural” and “destructive.” “To edit it down to that, it certainly didn’t reflect my full heart on the matter.”
