(LifeSiteNews) — The launch of a new reality TV series by a celebrity couple who had become famous in part because of their Christian content has sparked a huge backlash for their decision to unselfconsciously feature a homosexual couple raising young twin boys. 

Chip and Joanna Gaines, who garnered a large following during their HGTV home improvement series Fixer Upper rather than acknowledging a significant error in judgment, have instead pushed back against the weekend-long tsunami of criticism, accusing those calling them to repent of intolerance and judgmentalism.

“Y’all are going to love this show!! Social experiment + family time well spent,” Chip Gaines exclaimed on Friday evening. He could not have been more wrong. 

After a video clip of their new HBO MAX series, Back to the Frontier, started making the rounds early Saturday morning on social media, conservative Christian commentators began asking questions and expressing dismay.

A new reality TV show executive produced by professing Christian couple Chip and Joannes Gaines prominently features a gay ‘married’ couple as one of their three contestant families living as pioneers in 1881.

See the story: https://t.co/IDHHn2MCzY pic.twitter.com/Vnb6rvEsnK

— Protestia (@Protestia) July 11, 2025

By Sunday morning, Chip Gaines took to X to accuse “modern American Christian culture” of judging first and understanding either “later” or “never.”  

“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,” Gaines lamented.

This wasn’t an error that the Gaines had stumbled into. In a video interview with a gay media outlet, Queerty, one of the gay “husbands” said that the online flyer searching for participants for “Back to the Frontier” specifically advertised for a gay couple. 

He said that this was a “great, amazing opportunity to normalize same-sex couples and same-sex families.” 

These dads fought to be legally recognized as parents—now they’re blazing new trails on ‘Back To The Frontier’. pic.twitter.com/S3Dmlp8WE7

— Queerty (@Queerty) July 11, 2025

Clearly, the normalization of homosexuality was part of Chip and Joanna Gaines’ goal with their new show. 

The story gets weirder

But soon the Gaines’ story took an even stranger turn. 

According to Megan Basham, the Gaines “have close professional and personal ties to a strange polyamory arrangement in which a husband and father brought another man into the home and they are now together while the wife remains to raise the four children is true.” 

“I am told that the Gainses did not rebuke this situation but instead have affirmed … his choices,” Basham said. “The rot in Waco goes a lot deeper than I suspected.”

“Are Chip and Joanna about to have a Bud Light moment or does this blow over in a couple days?” Basham wondered. 

Compromising biblical truth and Christian values, surrendering to the world 

“Chip and Joanna Gaines produced a new reality show that prominently features a gay male couple with two children,” The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh noted. “Chip’s response to the Christians who’ve rightly criticized this decision is to, of course, condemn them as hateful bigots. It’s been clear for a long time that these two are frauds. At least now they’ve confirmed it.” 

“When the Zeitgeist matters more to Christians than the Holy Spirit,” Rod Dreher quipped. 

“Three things are certain in this world,” asserted Joe Rigney, fellow of Theology and author. 

1) Death

2) Taxes

3) Christian celebrities going soft on sodomy

“It starts with a little compromise here and there, and the next thing you know you’re celebrating two perverted dudes grooming two innocent kids and calling it a ‘family,’” Reformed Baptist Pastor Nate Schlomann said.  

“I don’t think the reaction to this is pearl-clutching from a bunch of judgmental Pharisees. I think people are realizing most American Evangelicalism is a mile wide and an inch deep, with rot and cowardice at the center,” Babylon Bee managing editor Joel Berry wrote. 

“We need repentance and revival. All of us do. It’s bad. Satan is picking us off one by one, and the Shepherds are asleep,” Berry warned.

Online commentator “Honest Youth Pastor” compared the Gaines’ compromise with the world to the experience of the David and Jason Benham, whose HGTV show was abruptly canceled in 2014 because of their opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion.  

The Benham Brothers unashamedly displayed their Christian convictions for which they paid a big price, while the Gaines exhibited compromise for the sake of profit. 

pic.twitter.com/JX2TQOJnOD

— Honest Youth Pastor (@HonestYPTweets) July 13, 2025

“Chip and Joanna Gaines are confirming they’re the typical nominal celebrity Christian who have built their own kingdom while tagging the name of Jesus Christ on the end of it,” John Mason wrote. “Once the faith they claim to have is truly tested by the godless networks that fund them, we see that the Word of God is not the foundation, so they bend the knee.

“They should cancel the show and repent for airing what they know is open rebellion of God’s created order of a married man and woman for profit,” Mason urged. 

‘Disappointing’

Perhaps the most common response from high profile individuals from the world of Evangelicalism was expressions of betrayal and disappointment over the Gaines’ decision to promote as “normal” a homosexual couple who had obtained their twin boys via surrogacy. 

“Why are you promoting homosexuality as a Christian?” conservative commentator Jon Root asked. “Why compromise on the Bible’s clear teachings on this? Why support homosexuals buying kids?”

“Disappointed would be an understatement,” Root added. 

“This is sad and disappointing, because Chip and Joanna Gaines have been very influential in the evangelical community,” the American Family Association’s Ed Vitagliano wrote. “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 Gaines 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.”

Evangelist Franklin Graham wrote, “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. While we are to love people, we should love them enough to tell them the truth of God’s Word. His Word is absolute truth. 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.”

“Disappointed,” Christine Niles said. “I used to love watching your home renovations and appreciated your Christian faith. Now you’re on a show promoting gay marriage and gay adoption, which are entirely contrary to Scripture.” 

Niles quoted Mark 8:36. Jesus asks: “For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?”