Pastor Louie Giglio has been selected
to deliver the benediction for President Barack Obama's second
inauguration.
ThinkProgress.com
reported that in a mid-1990s 54-minute sermon, titled In Search of
a Standard – Christian Response to Homosexuality, Giglio, of
the Georgia-based Passion City Church, advocated for therapies which
claim to “cure” gay people's sexual orientation and called on
Christians to prevent the “homosexual lifestyle” from becoming
accepted in society.
“We must lovingly but firmly respond
to the aggressive agenda of not all, but of many in the homosexual
community,” Giglio says in the sermon available
online. “Underneath this issue is a very powerful and
aggressive moment. That movement is not a benevolent movement. It
is a movement to seize by any means necessary the feeling and the
mood of the day, to the point where the homosexual lifestyle becomes
accepted as a norm in our society and is given full standing as any
other lifestyle, as it relates to family.”
Homosexuality, he said, “is sin.”
“If you want to hear God's voice, that is his voice to this issue
of homosexuality.”
On “ex-gay” therapies, he added:
“[W]e must reach out and we must aggressively move toward the
homosexual community because we have a message and we've got
something to say … our message is we know Jesus Christ and Jesus
Christ is powerful enough to do anything and to do everything. … It
is possible to change.”
On Wednesday, when asked by the
Washington Blade's Chris Johnson about Giglio's anti-gay
sermon, White House Secretary Jay Carney deferred the question to the
Presidential Inaugural Committee.
“I haven't seen that report,” he
said. “I would refer you to the inaugural committee. I haven't
seen the report.”
(Related: Gay
poet Richard Blanco to deliver Obama's inaugural poem.)