US: Anti-gay pastor Greg Laurie to lead National Day of Prayer events at the Pentagon
LGBT campaigners say a pastor who has preached against equal marriage shouldn’t be allowed to lead today’s National Day of Prayer events at the Pentagon and Capitol Hill.
The Human Rights Campaign and LGBT military group Outserve-SLDN had urged the Pentagon to withdraw its invitation to Greg Laurie – the honorary chairman of this year’s National Day of Prayer – because he teaches that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.
The Associated Press reports Mr Laurie said: “I’m not trying to censor anybody else, and I don’t think they should try to censor us.”
He added that people who “talk about tolerance the most” are often the most intolerant of opposing views.
Mr Laurie is senior pastor of the Harvest Christian Fellowship, which includes a ministry that seeks to “reach out to those in the homosexual lifestyle.”
According to the Pentagon, Mr Laurie’s participation does not signal an endorsement of his views by the Defence Department, and the National Day of Prayer, which was first established by Congress in 1952, is “not a Pentagon event.”
