During a recent sermon, Curtis Knapp,
pastor of the New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas, called on
the government to kill gay people.
“They should be put to death,”
Knapp
told congregants. “That's what happened in Israel. That's why
homosexuality wouldn't have grown in Israel. It tends to limit
conversions. It tends to limit people coming out of the closet. Oh,
so you're saying that we should go out and start killing them? No,
I'm saying the government should. They won't, but they should.”
He continued: “I can't believe you,
you're horrible. You're a backwards neanderthal of a person. Is
that what you're calling scripture? Is God a neanderthal, backwards
in his morality. Is this his word or not? If it's his word he
commanded it; it's his idea, not mine. And I'm not ashamed of it.”
Appearing
on CNN, Knapp compared being gay to pedophilia and incest.
“We punish pedophilia. We punish
incest. We punish polygamy, and various things. It's only
homosexuality that is lifted out as an exemption,” he told the
network.
Knapp went on to quote Leviticus 20:13
to justify his anti-gay rant.
“I don't think homosexuals have
anything to worry about. I don't think the government is going to do
that. They don't have anything to worry about from me. I don't
believe I should lay a finger against them. My hope is for their
salvation, not for their death.”
News of Knapp's sermon arrives on the
heels of Pastor Charles Worley's May 13 sermon, which called for gay
men and women to be confined behind an electrified fence and allowed
to die off. Thousands
protested Worley's message over the weekend.