Recently, Dolly Parton made big news in the contemporary Christian music industry. Ms. Parton is certainly no stranger to big news when it comes to her music. Parton has had a stellar, decades-long career as a country music artist. She has produced 25 number-one songs—a record she shares with Reba McEntire—seven chart-topping albums, and 44 top-10 albums—which leads all artists. In addition, she has been nominated for 49 Grammys and won 10.
Her most recent Grammy win was this year and was the result of her collaboration with the contemporary Christian duo, For King & Country, on the song “God Only Knows.” However, this effort was not what got Parton recent headlines in the Christian media. According to The Christian Post, Ms. Parton’s duet “There Was Jesus” with Christian artist Zach Williams “marks Parton’s first No. 1 on Billboard's Christian charts.”
Nevertheless, the biggest story here is not Parton’s Christian music Grammy or her number-one song. The biggest story here is that Christian artists would pair themselves, and produce work—Christian songs—with an individual who has been wrong on some of the most important moral issues of our time: marriage and homosexuality.
Ms. Parton has not only been wrong, she’s been very outspokenly wrong. What’s more, this is not a recent development. On the gravely important issues of marriage and homosexuality, Parton has been on the wrong side of the truth for quite some time and has frequently made her anti-biblical positions known.
According to Baptist Press, over 15 years ago, in early 2005, Ms. Parton joined dozens of other deceived music artists—including Christina Aguilera, Pink, the Dixie Chicks, and Emmylou Harris—in contributing to a CD entitled “Love Rocks.” All of the proceeds for “Love Rocks” went to the Human Rights Campaign. The Human Rights Campaign is the largest organization in the U.S. devoted to spreading LGBT propaganda and was co-founded by the infamous (and under arrest) Terry Bean. (Bean is a prominent democrat donor and fund raiser who was arrested and indicted in 2014 on two felony counts of third-degree sodomy and one count of third-degree sexual abuse after allegedly having sex with a 15-year-old boy he met online. Bean was again arrested last year for the same crimes, and after allegedly paying $200,000 to make the original charges go away.)
The largest advocate in the U.S. for the perverse LGBT agenda, the Human Rights Campaign was a leading voice in pushing for nationwide same-sex “marriage” in the U.S. Ms. Parton and those like-minded aided and abetted them.
In 2018, The Advocate—the “oldest and largest LGBT publication in the United States—called Ms. Parton “an enduring queer icon” and chronicled eight times that she “Cemented Her Status as an LGBTQ Icon.” Among other sad disclosures, The Advocate revealed that “Dolly loves drag.” They also noted how that, in 2005 Parton contributed the song “Travelin' Thru” to the film Transamerica.
The Advocate describes the film as “a trans woman's journey to self-love, and a reunion with the son she didn't know she had.” They also describe “Travelin' Thru” as a “lovely ditty” that “became an anthem of transformation and bravery, and it endeared us even more to Dolly.” The song was nominated for an Academy Award.
The Advocate piece also noted how Ms. Parton rejects the idea of “bathroom bans.” They wrote,
Of the bans, Dolly said to CNN Money in 2016: “I think everybody should be treated with respect. I don’t judge people and I try not to get too caught up in the controversy of things. I hope that everybody gets a chance to be who and what they are. I just know, if I have to pee, I’m gon’ pee, wherever it’s got to be.”
Such words from Ms. Parton remind me of the ignorant claptrap spouted by godless post-modernists who reject virtually every tenet of the Christian faith. Yet Parton considers herself a Christian. Her current number-one song frequently declares, “There Was Jesus.” She seems to have forgotten “why was Jesus” and why He died. There’s nothing in Scripture that indicates Jesus died so that “everybody gets a chance to be who and what they are.”
If a Christian can’t stand for the basic truth of who is a male and who is a female, what aspect of the faith can they be trusted to defend? Additionally, if Christians can’t be trusted to tell the truth on something as foundational as marriage, on what will they tell the truth?
In a foolish desire to be “relevant” or “tolerant,” Christians across the world—especially mainline Protestant churches and the Catholic Church—have abandoned long-heeded truths for heresy. This is especially the case when it comes to matters in the sexual realm. Nevertheless, the Bible is very clear on what is marriage and on what is moral when it comes to sex and sexual behavior.
In fact, there are few things that the Bible is clearer on than marriage. Marriage is “the Crown of Creation.” It is the priority relationship within the family, with all other relationships being subordinate, and functioning subject, to it. After our relationship with our Creator, the most important relationship in the universe is the relationship between husband and wife. The union is so profound that throughout the New Testament, God uses the analogy of the bride and bridegroom to describe the relationship between Jesus and the Church.
What’s more, marriage is the oldest institution in the history of humanity—older than God's covenant with the nation of Israel, older than The Law, older than the church. Marriage is one of the earliest truths revealed by God. If ANYTHING is true, marriage as the union of one man and one woman is true. On this, there can NEVER be compromise.
And neither can there be silence. This is especially the case for Christians with a wide audience and significant influence—like Christian musicians with voluminous radio airplay. Such Christians who know the truth but choose to remain silent would do well to recall the words of Mordecai to his cousin Esther (paraphrased):
Do not think that if you remain silent in this matter you will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise from someone else. And who knows but that you have come to your influential position for such a time as this?
On the matter of marriage, the stakes are too high, and the deceit too widespread to compromise.
Trevor Grant Thomas
At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith and Reason.
Trevor is the author of The Miracle and Magnificence of America
tthomas@TrevorGrantThomas.com
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