The anti-gay North Carolina pastor Charles Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church has been facing backlash over his recent sermon in which he said the US should pen in “all the lesbians and queers” with an electrified fence and wait for them to “die out.”

But it turns out Worley has been saying offensive things about gay people for decades.

Jeremy Hooper dug up this bit of hate from Worley in 1978, in which Worley says that “40 years ago” gay people would have been hung “from a white oak tree”:

WORLEY: I’m God’s preacher. I just believe the book. Living in a day when, you know what, it saddens my heart to think that homosexuals can go around, bless God, and get the applause of a lot of people. Lesbians and all the rest of it? Bless God, forty years ago they’d have hung ‘em, bless God, from a white oak tree, wouldn’t they? Amen.

Listen to it:

At a high school journalism conference last month, Dan Savage called out the Biblical hypocrisy when scripture is used to justify anti-gay positions while similar verses are ignored. The National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown accused Savage of bullying and challenged him to a debate: “You name the time and the place and let’s see what a big man you are in a debate with someone who can talk back.” Savage accepted this debate, and today on his podcast outlined exactly what time and place Brown could meet him:

SAVAGE: Where? My dining room table. Place? Seattle, Washington. Here’s the deal. We can fill a room with my screaming partisans and your screaming partisans and we’ll both play to our respective peanut galleries and I think both of us have a little bit of grandstander in souls and we will work that and I think that will create more heat than light. And so what I’d like to do is challenge you to come to my house for dinner. Bring the wife. My husband will be there. and I will hire a video crew and we will videotape sort of an after dinner debate.

The trick here is you have to knowledge my humanity by accepting my hospitality and I have to acknowledge yours by extending my hospitality to you. And I’m willing to do that.

Mark Oppenheimer, a New York Times journalist who has profiled both Savage and NOM’s Maggie Gallagher, has agreed to moderate the debate, and Savage’s neighbor will cook the meal. Brown will be allowed to confirm the tape has not been edited before it’s released so that there is “no trickery.”

Brian Brown has yet to respond. Stay tuned.

A coalition of national groups, led by the American Jewish Committee and Religious Freedom Education Project, have released new “guidelines” for public schools that attempt to walk the line between combating bullying and protecting religious speech.  The guidelines themselves are not particularly specific, but they seem to suggest that religious rhetoric should not be curtailed in anyway, regardless of how damaging or disruptive it might be to those who “disagree” with it:

With respect to sexual orientation and behavior, one student’s call for legalization of same-sex marriage may be perceived by another student as a challenge to his or her deeply held religious beliefs. Conversely, one  student’s expression of his or her religious convictions concerning what he or she  regards as sinful sexual behavior will be perceived by another student as suggesting that gay and lesbian students have no place in the school. A student may wear a T-shirt proclaiming “Straight Pride” to counter another student’s “Gay Pride” T-shirt, or vice versa.[...]

When confronting one student’s claim that another student’s speech conveying an idea is harassment and bullying, school officials should consider, time and circumstances permitting, explaining on an age appropriate basis, that disagreement about an idea is not necessarily a personal attack; that some students’ faiths may require them to express their views publicly; that students have a right to disagree with the view of other students or the school and to express that disagreement; and that the most effective response to an idea one disagrees with is often to express a contrary idea, not censorship. Suppression of speech should be the last, not first, resort.

The rhetoric in this document is troubling, because it ignores the current context for how prevalent anti-gay bullying currently is in schools, and how particularly damaging research has shown it to be. Rather, these guidelines suggest that “disagreements” are a two-way street — that a religious condemnation of homosexuality is equivalent in effect to a student’s opposing position defending gay people. This is absurd and completely ignores how vulnerable young people in the throws of coming out can be to such anti-gay viewpoints.

As documented in The Good News Club, conservative Christians are proactively encouraging anti-gay evangelism within schools. It’s unsurprising that among the endorsers of these guidelines are Christian Educators Association International, the Christian Legal Society, and the National Association of Evangelicals. Noticeably absent was GLSEN or any group that advocates for the LGBT community. These organizations are within their right to defend religious expression, but to minimize the impact of anti-gay bullying by conflating “condemnation” with “disagreement” is dangerously disingenuous. The key to reducing anti-gay bullying is training about LGBT issues, not openly humoring religious reproach while ignoring the harm it causes.

Mississippi Rep. Andy Gipson (R)

Last week, Mississippi state Rep. Andy Gipson (R) condemned the gay community on his Facebook wall, citing Leviticus 20:13, which opponents of LGBT equality interpret as calling for gay men to be put to death. Responding to a Change.org petition calling for his apology, Gipson stated on Friday, “I do not, cannot, and will not apologize for the inspired truth of God’s Word.” Yesterday, he has offered an official statement attempting to distance himself from those remarks:

Since that time, a well-known radical liberal blog (The Huffington Post) ran an article falsely claiming that this Facebook post was a call “to kill gay people.” Nothing could be further from the truth. I have never publicly or privately called for the killing of any people. I believe all people are created in the image of God and I stand firmly for the sanctity of all human life. All people are entitled to the protection of the laws of our nation and state protecting human life.

Any reasonable person who reads the actual post can see that both scriptures were cited only for the proposition that same-sex marriage is morally objectionable — sin. I believe this reflects the values of the vast majority of Mississippians and the people of District 77 whom I represent.

Many Biblical scholars counter the notion that this Leviticus verse actually translates to modern-day understandings of homosexuality. But any reasonable person who reads the scripture he cited for the purposes he cited it can see that if it condemns homosexuality as a sin, then it also calls for gays to be put to death. As long as Gipson stands by his interpretation of Leviticus 20:13 as the “inspired truth of God’s Word,” it is reasonable to conclude that he endorses its message. If he does not actually believe the words on the page as they are written, he should specifically qualify that he makes exceptions for which of God’s Words are inspired truth or admit that he has misinterpreted the scripture.