A video of an exorcism of a gay man has
sparked outrage in the gay community.
The video, which has since been removed
from YouTube, shows a young man writhing around on the floor as
church leaders expel the “homosexual demon” out of him for about
20 minutes.
“Right now I command you to leave!”
a man in a black suit demands. “Right now in the name of Jesus. I
call the homosexuality, right now in the name of Jesus!”
“Rip it from his throat!” a woman
yells. “Come on, you homosexual demon! You homosexual spirit, we
call you out right now! Loose your grip, Lucifer!”
Pastor Patricia McKinney of the
Manifested Glory Ministries church has finally stepped forward after
fleeing local reporters last week. She told CNN that her church is
not against being gay, it's against the gay “lifestyle.”
“Manifested Glory Ministries is not
against homosexuality. We do not hate them. We do not come up
against them. We do just not believe in their lifestyle,” she
explained.
She said the man in the video, who she
described as being very religious, asked the church for help because
“he did not want to live this way.”
After being criticized for her
approach, the Stamford, Connecticut pastor defended herself. Without
citing the video specifically, she told her weekly radio audience
Wednesday that she's being “persecuted.”
"It's been a hard time for me, but
I'm looking good and I'm standing strong because when you have a
mandate like mine you're not going to say what you want without the
adversary coming after you," she said. "If you are a true
prophet you're not going to be popular with the people."
“So many people that I've seen, when
they talk about coming out … The one thing they say that really
gets me is: I thought I was a bad person, and because I had these
feelings they had me convinced that I was … evil and sinful,”
Cenk Uygur said Wednesday on the Young Turks while discussing
the video. “To put that kind of shit on somebody? And then you
say, it's OK, it's a religion. Screw that, man.”