Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill (R), who announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate last week, claims Americans are too “preoccupied with homosexual activities” and “the wife swap shows” and it is ruining everything from TV to the country’s moral direction.
Merrill, one of multiple Republicans looking to challenge Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) in 2020, made the controversial comments over the weekend at a town hall event in Dekalb County, according to the Yellowhammer News.
One attendee asked Merrill about the culture shift and how the country’s principles have allegedly been eroded.
“[T]hat’s what we’ve allowed to happen,” Merrill said. “How have we allowed it to happen? There are no more good TV shows on like ‘Gunsmoke,’ ‘Bonanza,’ ‘The Virginian,’ ‘Andy Griffith,’ ‘I Love Lucy.’ We don’t have those shows anymore. We’re too interested in homosexual activities.”
“We’re too interested in seeing how this family’s finding a way to mess on this family or to see how people are trying to date on TV, or having wife-swapping on TV. That’s what we watch. When we push back against that, and we quit allowing it to be in our homes — that’s how those changes have occurred because we’ve allowed them to slowly but surely come into our lives,” he said.
Merrill confirmed his comments to Al.com Monday night in a phone interview.
“The foundational principles which we have grown up as a nation are no more,” Merrill said.
“I meant what I said. People are too interested in anything that is not uplifting, edifying. They’re too busy being preoccupied with homosexual activities and the wife swap shows,” he told the newspaper, declining to give examples of how Americans are too preoccupied with “homosexual activities.”
He said there are no longer TV shows “that are based on biblical foundations. … shows that promote family and culture with a father, a mother and children based on biblical teachings and biblical principles on which our nation was founded.”