Reformation Church pastor Kevin Swanson recently went on his Generations with Vision radio show to condemn Star Trek Into Darkness because it shows James Kirk in a post-coital bed with members of the "wrong species." To which we can only respond—has Swanson ever seen Star Trek?
On a June episode of Generations with Vision, Swanson explained that he wasn't going to take his children to see the new Star Trek movie because Star Trek—and evolutionary theory, he claimed—promotes interspecies romance, which is equivalent to bestiality in his estimation:
Swanson: Do I really want to take my kids to watch a movie that implicates the good guy in the film as mating with the wrong species- but not just one, but two.
Beuhner: Well you know I could understand that Christians would get upset if it was a male of a different species. No actually, I’m not sure that the bestiality and the homosexuality are really all that different.
Swanson: So uh Dave I said to myself we’re not gonna go see that movie. So, you know, you gotta draw the line somewhere don’t ya? I mean, ay yay yay. And how many Christians asked that question? I actually did a survey, I mean I went on to Google and kind of goggled, you know, Christian sites, I mean I try not to put the wrong kind of wording into the Google search, cause if you do that, you can be in a heap of trouble. So I did a little search, turns out there was a Catholic site, had a little forum discussion on the issue. And nobody brought up Leviticus 18 Dave, and of course the whole premise of this is that within an evolutionary construct there is no real problem with speciation and cross-species mating, there’s no problem with that at all, in fact that’s how you evolve, that’s how you get evolution, and so the end result of course is that evolution has no basic problem with bestiality or cross-species mating. Okay? Now some of you are saying that I can’t believe these guys are saying this on this radio program. I can’t believe I’m saying this either. They are going places where no man has gone before. Or should.
Well, if Swanson has some kind of beef with Terran-alien miscegenation, then he has a big issue with the whole mission behind Star Trek. After all, the original series gave us a half human/half Vulcan first officer, and from Kirk onwards, the characters have engaged in plenty of interspecies romance, often to show that deep down, we aren't all that different. But even if they have lion tails, these characters are portrayed as consenting adults. (Okay, there was that one episode of Voyager in which Janeway and Paris de-evolve into lizard creatures, but at least they do it simultaneously.) But apparently Swanson's issue has nothing to do with consent, and everything to do with the participants being members of the "other."
But Swanson is no stranger to creating controversy. Last year, he slammed the Jim Henson Company for parting ways with Chick-Fil-A over the fast food company's anti-gay stance. More recently, he's called feminists "family-destroying whores," and warned that members of the gay community would "burn Christians at the stake." So his preaching is based on a rather loose contact with reality—and fiction, for that matter.
Swanson: Star Trek Promotes Bestiality, Children's Show Superhero 'Probably Fighting Christians' [Right Wing Watch] and Star Trek promotes bestiality because Kirk sleeps with alien chicks, religious right says [America Blog]
Hat tip to Danny!