Parishioners at North Carolina's Providence Road Baptist Church have come to the defense of Pastor Charles L. Worley, days after video footage of him delivering a viciously homophobic sermon went viral in the blogosphere.
"So he had every right to say what he said about putting them in a pen and feeding them," Providence Road Baptist Church member Geneva Sims tells NBC news affiliate WCNC. "The Bible says they are worthy of death. He only preaches the word...God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."
Adds member Stacey Pritchard: "Sometimes you’ve got to be scared straight. He is trying to save those people from going to hell."
In the video, reportedly filmed on May 13, Worley calls for gays and lesbians to be put in an electrified pen and left to ultimately die off. "Build a great, big, large fence -- 150 or 100 mile long -- put all the lesbians in there," Worley suggests. "Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can't get out...and you know what, in a few years, they'll die out...do you know why? They can't reproduce!"
He also condemned President Obama's endorsement of same-sex marriage, proclaiming, "I'm not going to vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover!"
Yesterday, Good as You blogger Jeremy Hooper unearthed additional audio of Worley, apparently recorded in 1978, in which the pastor declares, "Forty years ago [LGBT people] would've hung, bless God, from a white oak tree!"
HuffPost Gay Voices reader Kaeylyn Hunt notes that several groups will be protesting the Providence Road Baptist Church on Sunday, May 27 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. "Regardless if you are gay or straight, Christian or not... this rhetoric is dangerous and harmful," planned demonstrators, who note that the rally will be peaceful, write on Facebook.
Check out Worley's May 13 sermon, along with some of the worst statements made about LGBT people by other right-wing pundits below:
