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Not on My Land

rihanna.JPGIt’s not every day a farmer spies a topless R&B singer in his wheat field. Yet that’s exactly what happened to Alan Graham last week. The Northern Ireland farmer had lent Rihanna’s film crew his property to shoot a music video. Before he knew it, she was donning skimpy tops, then going completely. So Graham drove up on his tractor and told Rihanna to cover up.

“If someone wants to borrow my field and things become inappropriate, then I say, ‘Enough is enough. You are not entitled to do that,'” explained the 61-year-old farmer, a committed Christian. “I requested that they stop filming and they did. I wish no ill will against Rihanna and her friends. Perhaps they could acquaint themselves with a greater God.”

Congratulations to Graham for taking a stand, then taking heat for it from some of his Bangor neighbors, who scolded him for single-handedly “ruining” their tourism industry. But he did the right thing. We live in a culture that has turned sexuality into a cheap commodity to be packaged, purchased, unwrapped and explored with selfish abandon. Graham knows better than that. And he refused to aid and abet those eager to exploit sexual immorality in the name of entertainment.

When I saw this story, it reminded me of a similar situation I encountered back in 1994. Filmmakers desperately wanted to use a particular Winterset, Iowa, farmhouse as the location for Clint Eastwood’s The Bridges of Madison County. If you’re not familiar with that movie or the best-selling novel, the story focuses on a bored Midwestern housewife’s four-day tryst with a professional photographer in town to take pictures of the area’s covered bridges. Well, 84-year-old Aaron Howell and his wife, Lola, refused to give Warner Bros. permission to set up shop in their home. Turned ’em down, flat.

“I’ve never been in favor of adultery,” Aaron, a Christian man, explained. “There’s never been any in this house, and there never will.” His wife of 65 years added that she couldn’t imagine their visiting grandchildren sleeping in the same bed where such inappropriate behavior took place, even if it was just Hollywood playacting.

The Howells reportedly passed up a lucrative payday, making their decision all the more honorable. They probably could have used the money. And who would have argued that an upstanding citizen who’d lost his right hand to a corn picker in 1958 didn’t deserve a little good fortune in his old age? But Aaron refused to rationalize or compromise.

“I told them I wouldn’t stand for any hanky-panky,” he said. “I think they thought they’d wear me down in time, but they didn’t know how strongly I feel.”

No doubt Alan Graham felt just as strongly last month when he interrupted Rihanna’s video shoot. It was simply the right thing to do. I respect both faithful farmers for plowing their furrows straight, sowing good seed and being able to separate the grain from the tares. Even if their principled behavior is drowned out by society’s sexual free-for-all, each had the conviction to say, “Not on my land.” We need to do the same. You and I may never find film crews knocking on our front doors, but we can still refuse to let racy entertainment set up shop in our homes.