From Bridgeport, Connecticut, comes chilling news that a church there has performed a "gay exorcism" to "drive out the homosexual demons" supposedly afflicting a 16-year-old parishioner. The Manifested Glory Ministries Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, posted a video of the ritual on YouTube, which has since deleted the footage.
Now, I'm all for freedom of religion, but here I believe the Church in question has clearly crossed the line from the free expression of religious belief, to the teaching and encouraging of hatred and homophobia. By demonizing homosexuality as something satanic, needing to be "driven out" of a person, the implicit message is that being gay or lesbian is wicked, horrible, evil, and makes you a danger to your fellow man. This is the preaching of hate. Imagine an impressionable person seeing this "exorcism", this endorsement of bigotry, taking it as "permission to hate". Would he then consider it God's will, to go out and beat up some defenseless gay person?
This abominable incident recalls other anti-gay pastors who have turned their pulpits into instruments of hatred, like Rev. Ken Hutcherson, whose diatribes against the LGBT community are well-documented. I wonder if any of these churches and men of God ever think of the Biblical teaching, "what you did for the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me". If we are to be rewarded for, and encouraged to do acts of benevolence towardss our neighbors, what does it say about a "gay exocism" in a Church which holds love and our walk with God so dear?
Shameful.
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