Fran Drescher: Kirk Cameron needs to rethink what it is to be an American
(CBS News) Fran Drescher, who stars in TV Land's comedy "Happily Divorced" and is an outspoken activist for marriage equality, lashed out at actor Kirk Cameron Tuesday night, saying he needs to "reexamine what it is to be an American."
The "Growing Pains" actor-turned-evangelist"I don't agree with anything that he says," Drescher told CBSNews.com. "I think that he is confusing our country, which is a country that separates church from state, with a religious dictatorship."
In an interview with CNN's Pierce Morgan that aired Friday, Cameron called homosexuality "unnatural" and "ultimately destructive to so many of the foundations of civilization."
The 54-year-Drescher, who officiated at a gay marriage Tuesday night in New York City for her "Love is Love Gay Marriage Contest," said Cameron needs to rethink what it truly means to be an American.
"To be an American is not to be a hater, not make a religion that you may practice to be an excuse for selecting a group of people and making them feel less good," Drescher said.
Drescher's "Happily Divorced" show is inspired by the real-life story of the comedian and revolves around the character Fran, a Los Angeles florist who finds out after 18 years of marriage that her husband is gay. Unable to sell the house with the economy, she and her gay ex-husband Peter must continue to live together, happily divorced as they both enter the dating world.
"As with everything that comes in your life that you didn't expect, that you didn't plan on, you have to play the hand that you were dealt," Drescher says of her marriage to Peter Marc Jacobson, who is also the show's co-creator. "Play it as courageously and eloquently as you can and take the feelings and love that you had for this person and just reinvent it, put it on another shelf and just forgive them because everybody has a right to live an authentic life."
The show's second season premieres on TV Land tonight, March 7, at 10:30 ET/PT.