Westboro Baptist Church has announced
that it will protest next month's Indianapolis 500.
The Topeka, Kansas-based church said in
a press release that the annual Memorial Day automobile race has
“pushed homosexuality for more than 40 years by propping up Jim
Nabors to sing Back Home Again (in Indiana).”
Last year, Nabors, the star of the CBS
sitcom Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., married his partner Stan
Cadwallader in Seattle, just weeks after Washington state legalized
marriage equality and before Hawaii, where the couple resides,
followed suit.
“Jim Nabors is not the lovable,
ho-hum, happy-go-lucky Gomer Pyle clown that he portrayed on the Andy
Griffith Show,” Westboro wrote. “Jim Nabors is a poster
child for homosexuality and sodomy.”
The 83-year-old Nabors, who first sang
at the race in 1972, has said this will be his final appearance at
the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
(Related: Anti-gay
activist Fred Phelps dead at 84.)