Two gay dads join HBO's 'Back to the Frontier,' and Bible Twitter melts down

Yahoo

5 days ago

HBO Max's new reality experiment, Back to the Frontier, just premiered, but the show has already become a culture-war flashpoint thanks to the presence of Texas husbands Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs with their 10-year-old twin sons. The series, produced by Magnolia Network's Chip and Joanna Gaines, drops three modern families into an 1880s homestead and strips away every 21st-century convenience.
Over the weekend, evangelical heavyweight Franklin Graham called the casting 'very disappointing,' warning that 'promoting something God defines as sin is in itself sin.'
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The American Family Association, an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group, piled on, accusing the Gaineses of abandoning 'biblical values' by showcasing what it calls the 'sanctity of marriage.'
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Gaines, a longtime darling of Christian viewers from his HGTV Fixer Upper days, fired back in his own thread. 'Talk, ask questions, listen.. maybe even learn,' he wrote. 'Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. Judge 1st, understand later/never.'
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He added that it was 'a sad Sunday when 'non believers' have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian.'
For Hanna and Riggs, visibility was the point. 'We're your neighbors and coworkers,' Hanna told Queerty, 'so it was an amazing opportunity to normalize same-sex couples and families.' The couple, who wed in Washington, D.C., in 2013 and spent years fighting Texas law for parental recognition, say reliving 19th-century hardships was nothing compared to the legal battles they faced back home.
While detractors rage online, the inclusion has galvanized queer viewers and stoked fresh interest in the show. The dads' Instagram, @2_dallas_dads, gained thousands of followers after Thursday's premiere, and hashtags like #FrontierDads and #ChipStandsUp trended over the weekend.
Beyond the backlash, Back to the Frontier offers a rare snapshot of LGBTQ+ representation in historical-style reality TV. Riggs noted that same-sex couples escaped city ostracism by homesteading together in the real 1880s—a stark reminder that queer families have always existed, even if today's critics refuse to see them.
New episodes drop on Thursdays on HBO Max and Magnolia Network. Whether angry tweets help or hurt ratings, the Hanna-Riggs clan is already homesteading squarely in the national spotlight. For many viewers, that's the win that matters.
This article originally appeared on Pride: Two gay dads join HBO's 'Back to the Frontier,' and Bible Twitter melts down