Ricky Martin: Anti-Gay Christians Want To Ban Pop Star From Honduras

Ricky Martin is the focus of a proposed ban by anti-gay Honduran Christian leaders because he is gay and has a family. Martin, a 39-year old international pop star, has a scheduled concert in the Central American country this month.

Via Fox News Latino:

An ecumenical group of religious leaders have demanded that the Honduran government deny a visa to Ricky Martin, arguing that he represents a bad moral example for the country’s youth.

The pop star, who is set to perform in the country on Oct. 16 in the Chochi Sosa stadium in Tegucigalpa, Honduras as part of his Música + Alma + Sexo (MAS) tour, has church leaders scrambling to halt his entrance, reports the Honduran daily El Heraldo.

The Minister of Interior of Honduras, Áfrico Madrid, claims that Evangelical and Catholic leaders have solicited that he deny a visa to Martin in order to “protect the moral and ethical principles of our society.”

Madrid claims that the religious leaders particularly object to Martin’s non-traditional family. “His nuclear family is not the type of family that Honduran society, and laws, approve of.”

Earlier this year, a Catholic Cardinal in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Martin’s birthplace, told the gay father of twins, not promote homosexuality. “To foster homosexuality or sexual promiscuity among our young people is certainly immoral, no matter where it comes from.”

WATCH: Ricky Martin On Oprah, “I Am In A Relationship, It Feels Amazing”

Cardinal Luis Aponte Martinez said, “I have personally admired Ricky for the great artistic gifts with which God has endowed him,” the Cardinal, according to a translation said, further imploring Martin to, “please, for the sake of their children, for whom I imagine [you] want the best, try to set an example to our young people of the great values we all share, besides sex.”

The 88-​year old Cardinal Martinez, profiled in the Spanish-​language newspaper Primera Hora,claimed the Catholic Church “does not reject the homosexual person, but rather the actions and conduct that go against morality.”

Love the sinner…

(hat tip: Towleroad)