Despite the controversy that gay marriage evokes with some of the Black community, “The Soul Man” on TV Land, which features Cedric The Entertainer as an R&B artist turned pastor, decided to give the very newsworthy issue a comic touch.
On tonight’s episode, “Bride and Prejudice,” airing at 11 p.m., Rev. Boyce “The Voice” Ballentine must decide if he should risk his congregation’s ire by allowing a lesbian couple to be married in the church.
“Of course it was a big issue this year, so we decided to go ahead and pick that up,” Cedric told the Tom Joyner Morning Show. “We just wanted to go ahead and attack it [from the point of view of] someone who’d been in the church, been there all their life and then decided she wanted to bring it back home.
I have to at that moment decide, if I’m going to be one that’s about a somebody I know and love and respect or am I going to hold onto a value, like the whole church is against, because of some old morals and stuff. So I elect to marry these two young ladies and it’s a lot of controversy there.”
Of course the church elders are not in favor – the ones Cedric calls the “self-righteous funky bunch.” Despite the their disapproval, Ballentine’s wife, played by Niecy Nash, thinks maybe he’s a little too enthusiastic about the lesbian nuptials.
‘The Soul Man” airs Wednesday nights at 11 p.m. on TV Land.