cross-posted at Talk2Action
One of the leaders of the effort to write a gay marriage ban into North Carolina's constitution is Patrick Wooden, the pastor of Upper Room Church of God in Christ in Raleigh. In the past few days, the yeomen at People for the American Way's Right Wing Watch have decided to turn the hot lights on him. What they found is cringe-worthy, even by wingnut standards.
Last week, Wooden appeared outside the Southern Poverty Law Center with several other prominent religious right leaders to protest the SPLC's designation of their organizations as hate groups for their anti-gay hankering. A few days before that event, Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality invited Wooden onto his radio show on WYLL in Chicago. Wooden proceeded to prove just why the hate group label is well deserved. Besides the usual religious right spiel about gays being a danger to the very fabric of civilization, he suggested that middle-aged gays have serious health problems later in life. Hear it for yourself:
Listen to the whole thing (if you can stand it) here.
Earlier this week, LaBarbera invited Wooden onto his show again, where Wooden doubled down on the ugliness and bigotry. He claimed that gays stick cell phones and other objects up their rears, and even claims to have seen a gay man die from losing his bowels. Nope, this isn't snark. Listen to the whole thing here.
As a black tongue-talker myself, even now listening to this makes me shudder. Fundies claim to love gays--just not their lifestyle. Apparently Wooden has an awfully funny definition of "love."
One would think that mainstream religious right leaders would run away from this kind of rhetoric. Oh, no. Just five days after his first appearance on LaBarbera's show, he appeared on American Family Radio's Today's Issues with Tony Perkins and Tim Wildmon. If anyone believes that Perkins and Wildmon didn't know about Wooden's disgusting comments, there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you.
LaBarbera himself, like most "mainstream" religious right muckety-mucks, condemns Fred Phelps as "unChristian." Well, can anyone tell me the difference between Phelps' bile and the bile we've heard from Wooden? I didn't think so. Well, take that back. There is one--skin color.
And this isn't just some random pastor with a case of diarrhea of the mouth. Wooden's church is one of the largest black churches in North Carolina. He's also an important leader in COGIC--he's superintendent of the Greater Central North Carolina District. The frightening part, speaking as a black man myself, is that this may be a taste of how prevalent homophobia is in the black community. It's sad, really--conventional wisdom would suggest that blacks and LGBTs would be natural allies.