Friday, February 11, 2011

GUEST COLUMN: "The Moral of the Story" by Ken Blackwell

Former Ohio Secy of State Ken Blackwell
 By Ken Blackwell

Conservatives across the country have one thing in common this February: they are all going to the movies.  Movie theaters all over America are bursting full of conservative Christians clamoring to see The Genesis Code.

Why?  Conservatives are thrilled to see a thought-provoking movie whose central idea is not an argument against American influence or traditional religion.  We’ve grown used to sighing as Hollywood lectures us on the same old liberal tropes: the military is full of trigger-happy meatheads who can't be trusted with power, any person who claims knowledge of moral truth will be revealed as a corrupt hypocrite, and America has brought nothing but grief and oppression into the world.

So a group of conservatives and film industry professionals banded together to form American Epic Entertainment, a film production company dedicated to making movies with morals.  Their first release, The Genesis Code, is nothing like a typical Hollywood film.  

Not only is it a well-made, wholesome family film, the movie takes on three different hot-button issues: the battle between Science and Faith to be the ultimate authority on truth, the discrimination against Christians on college campuses, and the fight to protect the right to life at all stages. The film addresses these controversies within the film with principled, compelling answers that will appeal to the conservative sensibility.  

But the movie is not just for card-carrying members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.  Rather than indulging in the demonization of the other side fighting the culture wars, this movie endeavors to open up the kind of “honest, open dialogue” for which pundits constantly call.  

Faith does not trounce science in this film -- the two find common ground in the startling parallels between the scientific theories on the creation of the universe and the account of Creation in Genesis.  The conflict between students and professors on the nature of truth, as well as the conflict between families and the law on the nature of life, are presented in a personal, emotional way.  

In this way, The Genesis Code will do more good for conservative principles than a score of protests. By elucidating conservative positions in real life and inviting audiences into the debates that shape what we think, this is a movie that can change the world.  

Given that possibility, no wonder conservatives across America are selling out theaters showing The Genesis Code.