Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I have a friend who went to see Kirk Cameron speak over the weekend at a Christian marriage event in Virginia. (It was not me. You could not pay me to do that.) She said that Cameron made some jokes about his Mike Seaver past, but that he didn’t say anything about gay people at all. She also added that there were protesters outside, which warmed my heart. (I found this article about it also.)

Anyway Kirk is promoting his documentary-style movie, Monumental, which basically proposes that the solution to all of America’s problems is to no longer separate church and state. (I honestly smacked my head after writing that.) As part of that, he’s got to eat crow a little for his earlier statements against homosexuality. As I said in my last story on this, I have no problem with a “hate the sin, love the sinner” approach to gay people. For people who think homosexuality is a sin, it’s cool if they say they don’t agree with being gay but that they have gay friends and love them dearly or whatever. That’s not what Kirk said. He called being gay “unnatural… detrimental, and ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization.” Then later he defended himself by claiming that he’d been “slandered” and “accused of hate speech,” but he didn’t take back anything he said.

In a new interview with The Today Show, Kirk tried to go with the “hate the sin, love the sinner” tactic, since his last approach didn’t really work for him. He also claimed that he was taken out of context and called it “inappropriate and insensitive” to take him at his word.

“I was surprised, frankly, that people were surprised by the things that I’ve said,” he explained. “I have been consistent for 15 years as a Christian. I’m a Bible-believing Christian. What I would have thought was more newsworthy is if I had said something that contradicted the word of God, if I had contradicted my faith.”

So, given his comments, does Cameron, who had also come on the show to discuss his new documentary “Monumental,” actually hate gay people?

Absolutely not,” he said. “I love all people, I hate no one. … When you take a subject and reduce it to something like a four-second soundbite and a check mark on a ballot, I think that that’s inappropriate and insensitive. … To edit it down to that, it certainly didn’t reflect my full heart on the matter.”

Cameron feels that his opinions shouldn’t be interpreted as a trigger for bullying or violence against homosexuals.

“Nobody should mistreat anybody,” he said. “We all have our convictions formed by different things and mine are informed by my faith. They’re formed by the word of God, and I found that to be an anchor for me, a compass and a guide for me. When people start bullying one another and calling each other names for those different convictions, then I think you get into problems.”

[From The Today Show]

As I said before, I read his entire transcript on The Piers Morgan show where he made those original remarks. (And I just re-read them too.) He didn’t say he loved and/or respected everyone, including gay people. He wasn’t taken out of context, he went on at length about his point. His follow-up statement was more of the same. He’s being defensive about this because he has to. At least he’s paying lip service to not mistreating people or bullying them. In Kirk’s mind, he’s the one being persecuted, not the other way around.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pLHLnpmirJOdxm%2BvzqZma2lmZn5ye8qiqaSXk5a6pr7Op5aopo%2BptaarwZqapKSRqLWgwM6Yn6Krj5a7tbWMoJiyl5Okuq6xza2qmKGklMSiv76ipZqooKe8sb7Imquel5GjsaC1zaycp6uZqba3sb5o