Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery
America’s premier purveyors of shiplap and open-concept living have found themselves in hot water with the Christian right. Chip and Joanna Gaines, the former king and queen of HGTV and now the rulers of their own Magnolia empire, have spent the past few days on the receiving end of some good old-fashioned Christian backlash. Why? Well, they went and defied the Lord himself by casting a gay couple on Back to the Frontier, their Little House on the Prairie–meets–Survivor reality show. While that may sound like amazing television to you and me, a lot of Fixer Upper fans are fuming. Here, what’s going on.
The Gaineses are producing a new reality show called Back to the Frontier, which premiered last week on the Magnolia Network section of HBO Max. The show follows three families as they abandon the comforts of modern life and head to the wilderness to live like 19th-century homesteaders; they have to tend to their crops, deal with livestock, and poop in an outhouse. Considering the rise of tradwives, raw milk, and a general desire to return to a “simpler” time, it’s a pretty smart idea for a show. The only problem is that there’s a gay couple.
Two of the participants are Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs, a couple who appear on the show alongside their twin boys, Ethan and Lucas. The couple, who share their life on their Instagram account, @2_dallas_dads, have said that they went on the show to help represent the LGBTQ+ community.
“We’re super honored that when they were choosing three modern day families, that they did choose the same sex couple as a modern-day family — because we are. We’re your neighbors and your coworkers. And so it was this amazing opportunity to [continue to] normalize same-sex couples and same-sex families,” Hanna told Queerty in a recent interview.
Okay, seems sweet enough. Unfortunately, now it’s time to see what some ghouls have to say about watching a gay couple churn butter.
Because a sizable chunk of the Gaineses’ fan base is right-wing Christians, the backlash was swift. Franklin Graham, the son of the influential reverend Billy Graham, was one of the most notable people to weigh in. “I hope this isn’t true, but I read today that Chip and Joanna Gaines are featuring a gay couple in their new series. If it is true, it is very disappointing,” Graham wrote on X, adding, “God loves us, and His design for marriage is between one man and one woman. Promoting something that God defines as sin is in itself sin.”
Others accused the couple of promoting “sexual depravity” and stated that this was happening because Evangelicalism hadn’t gone far enough in its teachings.
The American Family Association, a Christian-fundamentalist organization, shared a statement condemning the Gaineses. “This is sad and disappointing, because Chip and Joanna Gaines have been very influential in the evangelical community,” said Ed Vitagliano, the group’s vice-president. “Moreover, in the past, they have stood firm on the sanctity of marriage regardless of the personal cost that has entailed. We aren’t sure why the Gaineses have reversed course, but we are sure of this: Back to the Frontier promotes an unbiblical view of human sexuality, marriage, and family — a view no Christian should embrace.”
If you have mostly consumed the Gaineses’ content while flipping channels at your parents’ house, you might have missed this aspect of their whole deal, but yes. It’s unclear exactly how Christian they are these days — while they are definitely practicing Christians (and were certainly at one point Evangelical), their beliefs seem to have moved leftward over the years. In 2016, BuzzFeed reported that the couple attended an Evangelical megachurch where the pastor was vehemently opposed to gay marriage and believed that people could be converted to heterosexuality. At the time, they shared a statement saying, “We don’t discriminate against members of the LGBT community in any of our shows.”
“The accusations that get thrown at you, like you’re a racist or you don’t like people in the LGBTQ community, that’s the stuff that really eats my lunch — because it’s so far from who we really are,” Joanna told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. In the same interview, Chip said, “As an American white male, it’s hard to be perfectly diverse” but that they were thoughtful about their 700-person staff at their media brand, Magnolia. “One of our biggest passions is making this group represent all people,” he told the outlet. It seems that they might not be as Bible-thumping as they used to be, but they’re still close enough that people got really upset about Back to the Frontier.
Once people started to get up in arms, Chip shared a statement on X. “Talk, ask qustns, listen.. maybe even learn. Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. Judge 1st, understand later/never,” he wrote. “It’s a sad sunday when ‘non believers’ have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian.”
Pretty good! Joel Berry, conservative author and editor of the Babylon Bee, replied saying that he was “sad” because “I can’t let my kids watch your show now, since I’m trying to protect their eyes and hearts from the lies of the world — lies you’re now participating in.” Chip replied by saying, “Plenty of other stuff out there. I’m sure everyone will be fine.” He also said that he would be “taking some of the thoughtful, heartfelt, encouraging constructive criticism to heart,” so don’t expect a Magnolia Network float at Waco Pride or anything.
Do these outraged Fundamentalists even have HBO Max accounts that they can cancel in protest, or are they just yelling for the sake of yelling? If they must be up in arms over the content on that platform, they could at least direct their ire constructively. There are nearly 100 episodes of Entourage on there that need to be dealt with.
