Earlier this week, we discussed how Buzzfeed got the ball rolling on “exposing” Chip and Joanna Gaines’ conservative Waco church. Chip and Joanna are the hosts of HGTV’s wildly popular Fixer Upper, one of the better shows in the “house-fixing-up” genre. They work with couples or families to purchase rundown Waco properties, then Chip renovates the houses and Joanna decorates them. The Gaineses are being pushed hard this year as reality-show breakout stars. With that added media attention came a closer focus on their faith. Both Chip and Joanna are Evangelical Christians, and they belong to a Waco church whose preacher says a lot of sh-t about LGBTQ people. The preacher is against gay marriage and believes that homosexuality is a choice, and gay people should be convinced (through conversion therapy, prayer and faith) to choose to be heterosexual, or at least just have hetero sex within hetero marriage.
Buzzfeed’s report was considered a “hit piece” in some quarters, and as you can imagine, the whole thing became one of those stupid pop-culture-and-faith issues, same with the Duggars and Duck Dynasty. Like, some people said Buzzfeed was “attacking” Christians for going to church. Which… no. If the Gaineses want to go to a church whose pastor preaches anti-LGBT hate speech, that’s their right. But when there’s an intersection of faith and commerce, things get tricky, and I personally wanted to know if Chip and Joanna have had issues or would have issues working with LGBTQ people. Well, the Gaineses still haven’t said anything, but HGTV said something.
On Wednesday, BuzzFeed published a damning report claiming that Fixer Upper stars Chip and Joanna Gaines are members of a local Waco, Texas, church with a firm anti-same-sex-marriage stance that promotes gay conversion. The piece criticized the couple for how their religious beliefs may influence their hit HGTV show, calling into question whether or not they’ve discriminated against the LGBTQ community via who they pick to appear on their show. (Through three seasons, with a fourth just recently premiered, Fixer Upper has yet to feature a same-sex couple.)
While the stars have declined to comment, the network has come to the Gaineses’ defense. In a statement to BuzzFeed, HGTV says that Fixer Upper is as open to having same-sex clients as every other HGTV property: “We don’t discriminate against members of the LGBT community in any of our shows. HGTV is proud to have a crystal clear, consistent record of including people from all walks of life in its series.” The network did not confirm or deny whether the Gainseses attend that church, which for now is good news for shiplap lovers of all identities.
Which is what I said in my first post – HGTV has an outstanding record of LGBTQ inclusion, not to mention racial diversity, across their programming. If this was simply HGTV’s call, I would defend the network completely, because their record speaks for itself. But it would be interesting to know if the Gaineses have control over Fixer Upper’s production to the extent to which they could deny a gay couple the chance to be on their show. I believe the Gaineses do have that kind of production control, and I want to know if they’ve ever done that.
Magazine covers courtesy of Texas Monthly & Parade, additional photos courtesy of Joanna Gaines’ Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/joannagaines/?hl=en
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