North Carolina Pastor Sean Harris
called on parents to force their children to conform to gender
stereotypes during a sermon in support of Amendment One on Sunday,
GoodAsYou.org
first reported.
The campaign to approve Amendment One,
which would ban marriage, civil unions and possibly domestic
partnerships for gay and lesbian couples in North Carolina, last week
called on religious leaders to reach out to congregants in support of
the amendment.
Harris, the senior pastor of Berean
Baptist Church in Fayetteville since 2006, insisted marriage equality
is not a civil rights issue – no one was born gay, he said –
before he called on parents to squash non-conforming behaviors out of
their children.
“So your little son starts to act a
little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing
that like a cockroach and saying, 'Man up, son, get that dress off
you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,'
you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting
like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs
about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting
out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed,” Harris
said.
“Dads, the second you see your son
dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist.
Man up. Give him a good punch. Okay? You are not going to act like
that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a
male. And when your daughter starts acting too butch, you reign her
in. And you say, 'Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play
them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a
girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl
and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be
attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.'” (The audio is
embedded in the right panel of this panel. Visit
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