On Sunday, Maryland Pastor Dennis Leatherman delivered a sermon titled, “Homosexuality & the Bible,” during which he said, discussing homosexuals, “Kill them all. Right? I will be very honest with you. My flesh kind of likes that idea. But it grieves the Holy Spirit. It violates Scripture. It is wrong.”
Well, we’re relieved the only thing stopping Pastor Leatherman (I’m not even going to touch that one) is that he thinks his Bible says it’s wrong. Because, technically, it doesn’t.
Pastor Leatherman, whose church is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, also takes a page from Pastor Worley, and says:
Homosexuality is wrong. Amen, preach it. We need to put them all in prisons and we ought to fence them in. The same judgment on sodomy, God says the same consequences for sodomites is the exact same thing that should be for adulterers.
Yesterday, no doubt in response to the attention they are now getting in the media, the Chiurch on their Facebook page wrote:
Until the church is as upset about the adulterers & fornicators behind our pulpits and in our pews as we are about the sodomites in our streets, not much is going to change.
Pastor Leatherman is but one of a number of religious leaders that The New Civil Rights Movement has reported on who recently advocated killing, beating, incarcerating, or otherwise illegally attacking members of the LGBT community.
For example, today we also reported on a 4-year old who was filmed singing ‘Ain’t No Homos Gonna Make It To Heaven’ In Church. To thunderous applause.
Then there was North Carolina Pastor Charles Worley, who recently advocated genocide-loke camps for all gay people, and North Carolina’s Beacon Baptist Pastor Tim Rabon, who asked parishioners, “what is stopping them from refining [sic] marriage as between a person and a beast? We’re not far from that.†And of course, there’s the now-infamous Pastor Sean Harris, who derided parents who don’t “squash like a cockroach†the gay out of their children, and told fathers to “crack that wrist” of their boys if they seem effeminate.
These are not men of any God I can imagine.
Here’s a portion of the audio and a few choice excerpts from Pastor Leatherman’s sermon, which you can read in full here, thanks to Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper, who continues to be an amazing research for unearthing these offenses.
http://www.goodasyou.org/player.swf
I resent the fact that the world backs us into a corner and makes us deal with issues that we really shouldn’t have to deal with. Do you follow what I am saying? Particularly with our young people. Our young people ought not to be exposed to the subject that we are dealing with tonight, but the world has forced it upon them and we almost, not almost, we as a church have to say, “All right, wait a minute. This is the truth on this issue.†And so that is where we are at.
And so I am going to speak tonight on homosexuality and the Bible. I hate even talking about this behind the pulpit, to be honest with you. I feel dirty just talking about it.
*
The first term I want to identify tonight and try to explain is the term gay. Homosexuals like to address themselves as being gay. The word gay means merry, exuberant, bright, happy. I do not use that term to identify a homosexual. I see nothing gay about that lifestyle. Forty years ago the term gay simply meant you were happy, you were carefree, your life was being lived in a very delightful way.
Remember the old song? When Johnny comes marching home again, hurrah, hurrah. How many people remember that song? And we will all be gay when Johnny comes marching home. That was a good song. That was a song of victory and happiness and rejoicing. You can’t sing that song today, not as it is written. That word has been twisted to mean something very perverse, to identify a lifestyle that is very dirty. There is nothing bright, happy or merry about the homosexual behavior.
The second … so that is the word gay. You are not going to hear me use it referring to that behavior. The second word, which is more of a technical term and is used primarily is the word homosexual, that term. It is a very specific term. It identifies what the lifestyle is. The word homo means same. Simply described, the definition is simply a homosexual is someone who is sexually attracted to the same sex, physically attracted to a person of the same gender.
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There is another word that I believe the Church should have and should continue to use in this subject and that is the word sodomite. That is the biblical term for a person who is attracted physically to someone of the same sex, a sodomite. It refers to those who practice the perversion and sin of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
When the Bible or a Christian, a Bible student, refers to sodomites, they are not talking about the offspring of the people who lived in sodomites, like you would the Edomites or the Israelites. It is being… when it is used in the Bible, it is being used to refer to a very particular lifestyle that was prominent in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
I use the term … there is another term that I want to use that doesn’t… that we are using to deal with this issue and that is this: perversion. Someone says that… someone makes a reference to a pervert. And we have a mental picture in our mind of what they are talking about. The word perversion or to pervert has a very simple meaning. It means to take something that is good or something that is of integrity and twist it into some thing it was not originally intended to be. That is what it means. You can take a steel beam and pervert it. You take that steel beam and you twist it into a shape it was not designed to be. Do you follow what I am saying? And so when we talk about a perversion, we are talking about something that was originally good and had been twisted into something other than what God intended for it to be.
So we have the term gay, which we reject, I reject. That is totally inappropriate to use that. it is deceptive to apply that term. You have the term homosexual, which is a very accurate, technical definition, a term. You have the biblical term sodomite which is what the Bible refers it to. So number one are terms. We have laid that there.
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Homosexuality, according to these passages is a conscious decision to reject the moral standards of God. People consciously decided to do this.
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Are some born homosexual? Are some born with homosexual tendencies? Are people born with effeminate tendencies? My answer is sure. And some people are born with a tendency to be a liar. And some people are born with a tendency to be dishonest and to steal and some people are born with a tendency to be violent. Of course we have sinful tendencies. We are sinful human beings. And just because I am born with a tendency towards something does not justify it. To be… have a tendency to be effeminate or homosexual is just as wicked as to have a tendency to be a womanizer.
Sinful nature does not justify sinful behavior. Now what is our take? What is our response? I appreciate your bearing with me tonight. First of all, there is a danger of reacting in the flesh, of responding not in a scriptural, spiritual way, but in a fleshly way. Kill them all. Right? I will be very honest with you. My flesh kind of likes that idea. But it grieves the Holy Spirit. It violates Scripture. It is wrong.
In case you’re inclined to contact Pastor Leatherman, we suggest you do so in a civil manner and under no circumstances should you threaten him or his church. Remember the radical religious right monitors blogs and they get sent emails and these documents become evidence in court. It’s also illegal and wrong to threaten someone, so be careful.
Mountain Lake Independent Baptist Church (contact page)
1000 Broadford Rd Oakland, MD 21550
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