Kirk Cameron hosts another Christmas singalong protest of California COVID rules

A second Christmas singalong protest hosted Tuesday night by actor Kirk Cameron drew dozens to a Southern California shopping mall parking lot.

Cameron billed the event as a protest against COVID-19 restrictions in California, KABC reported.

“Let your voice be heard at this peaceful protest praising the Prince of Peace,” Cameron wrote on social media.

The protest follows a Dec. 13 event, also hosted by Cameron, that the mayor of Thousand Oaks called “un-Christian” in a pandemic, McClatchy News previously reported.

Cameron had billed that event as a worship service. California’s COVID-19 restrictions permit outdoor worship.

About 150 people, most not wearing face masks or observing social distancing, turned out for the Tuesday singalong protest at The Oaks shopping mall, KCBS reported.

“We continue to share our community’s concerns over these irresponsible — yet constitutionally protected — events and have law enforcement on property,” mall officials said in a statement, KABC reported. “We reached out to the organizer to ask that the event be moved.”

Medical experts warned that such events are dangerous as COVID-19 cases surge in California and across the nation, KCBS reported.

“Some super spreading events end up in people dying,” said Dr. Suman Radnakrishna of Dignity Health California Medical Center, according to the station. “This is just for the season. The vaccine is coming, if we can just wait it out.”

Cameron’s Dec. 13 singalong, also in a mall parking lot, drew several hundred people, McClatchy News reported.

“Liberty and freedom are very fragile and they come with great responsibility,” Thousand Oaks Mayor Claudia Bill-de la Pena said at the time. “Continuing to hold large gatherings and ignoring all guidelines, I feel, is un-Christian.”

Numerous California counties, including those in Southern California and the Bay Area, remain under stay-home orders.

More than 78 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide with more than 1.7 million deaths as of Dec. 23, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has more than 18 million confirmed cases with more than 323,000 deaths.

In California, more than 1.9 million people have tested positive for coronavirus and more than 23,000 have died, the university reports.

This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 11:00 AM with the headline "Kirk Cameron hosts another Christmas singalong protest of California COVID rules."