Richard Land, president of the Southern
Evangelical Seminary and a former Southern Baptist Convention
official, has described LGBT non-discrimination ordinances as an
attack on free speech.
While guest-hosting FRC's Washington
Week radio show on Thursday, Land spoke with Gene Mills of the
Christian conservative Louisiana Family Forum about the recent defeat
of such a measure in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Land claimed that the measure, which
sought to bar employment and housing discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation and gender identity, would “suppress the freedom
of speech.”
“Homosexuality and the gay, lesbian,
bisexual, transgender community, that is the ultimate rebellion
against God,” Land said. “We don't want them to take away from
us the right to say that that's a rebellion against God.”
“And that's exactly what they were
doing, they were going to use a cause of action against us to silence
– and that is what is happening in 'everywhere USA' – religious
liberty is under assault. … Any expression, any thought, anything
you just shared, could have been construed as a hate crime or an act
of discrimination, and the reality is the shame and the guilt the
homosexual feels is mistakenly reinterpreted as discrimination and
what they attempt to do is to call it discrimination and prohibit
it.”
Writing at Right
Wing Watch, Brian Tashman responded: “According to the Human
Rights Campaign, approximately 200 cities have non-discrimination
ordinances in place. If anything Mills or Land said in the interview
was true, then pastors around the country would be facing prosecution
… but they’re not because the two Religious Right activists are
completely dishonest.”