CAMARILLO, Calif. - Someone has a particularly sarcastic sense of humor, and the owner of the Christian-oriented movie-review site MovieGuide doesn't think they're funny.
"This is a criminal attack on our ministry," Dr. Ted Baehr said after an email purporting to be from him made the rounds earlier this week and shuttled unknown numbers of the site's potential visitors off to a gay porn portal. "We are looking at legal and criminal action, but in the meantime, we urgently ask all of our partners and supporters to please pray that no one will be fooled by these attacks and that the attacks will stop."
According to its mission statement, MovieGuide "is a ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles, by influencing entertainment industry executives and helping families make wise media choices."
Gay porn, according to Baehr, is not a wise choice. Nothing about gay cinema cleaves to the high moral standards espoused by the Christian Film and Television Commission, which Baehr established in 1986 and for which he now serves as chairman. Nor does anything about gay porn indicate it would meet the standards against which movies at MovieGuide are judged, primarily their adherence to conservative Christian theology and worldview. Even mainstream movies that do not meet MovieGuide's admittedly subjective criteria for "acceptability" - say, those that promote non-Christian belief systems or glorify characters who give in to temptation - do not fare well at the website.
In a press release, Baehr stopped just short of labeling the email pranksters gay terrorists. He did, however, attempt to characterize the message as retaliation for California voters' recent approval of Proposition 8, which added a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
"In recent weeks, numerous Christian groups, churches and supporters of California's Prop. 8 in favor of traditional marriage have experienced vicious attacks and hate mail, including death threats, from homosexual, left-wing activists and followers," Baehr said.
He did not elaborate about any of those alleged incidents.
In an interview with WorldNetDaily, a Christian-oriented news site for which Baehr writes a column, he was even blunter, accusing the mainstream mass media of colluding with "leftist extremists."
MovieGuide and Baehr's other endeavors are "a target for the leftist extremists [who] have staged angry demonstrations outside and inside churches and businesses, begun boycotts and even forced artistic leaders to resign from their posts," Baehr said. "Sadly, no one in the mass media is speaking out against these vicious blacklists and boycotts. Apparently, blacklists and boycotts against anti-American communists in Hollywood are bad, but blacklists and boycotts against Christians, Mormons and conservatives are welcomed.
"Homosexual activists like to complain about hatred toward homosexuals, but their hatred of Bible-believing Christians is palpably disgusting."
The attack on MovieGuide is part of "a concerted effort at slander, libel, identity theft and harassment," Baehr added.
