Evangelical leader claims gay people cause poverty and homelessness
An evangelical ‘ex-gay’ activist has claimed that acceptance of gay people leads to poverty and homelessness.
The claim comes from Robert Oscar Lopez of MassResistance, a US-based hardline Christian group that lobbies against LGBT equality.
In an interview with Linda Harvey of Mission America, Lopez claimed that gay equality leads to inequality.
In comments noted by Right Wing Watch, he claims: “There is nothing really defensible about this movement at this point. Not only is the sex act terrible of itself, but there is no sense of charity or tolerance. What you have is a very harsh, unforgiving attitude.”
He added: “When you start glorifying homosexuality, you become like the current state of California, where there are homeless people who are proliferating on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles.
“You have the highest poverty rate in the whole country in the state of California, where they’re the most accepting of gays. And you have the greatest suppression of Christian religious liberty.”
After attacking the suppression of liberty, Lopez went on to call for gay Pride parades to be banned.
He said: “It’s not really fair for them to have a gay pride parade in a public space and make everyone who is passing through the downtown area see all of this sexually provocative and really rather repulsive behaviour.
“hey’re not people who are oppressed or victims, they’re imposing their will on others and if you think about it that way, it really looks a lot more like Sodom than anything else. It looks like a group of people who are trying to strong-arm everyone else into either active participation or complicity.”
MassResistance is listed as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Lopez has previously spoken about being a former homosexual.
He said: “I wasn’t trying to actively trying to get out of the gay lifestyle, I just fell in love with a woman, and then I had a conversion experience.
“My conversion experience was more related to the fact I was in a sexual relationship with a woman. I was worried she was going to become pregnant, which was not something I had to deal with when I was involved with men.
“There was a seriousness about having sex with women, and I found myself praying for guidance. The message became clear, you have to get married, so that is how god played into it.
“I had to become a decent husband and a good Christian man.”
Lopez previously complained that he does not get enough attention from the LGBT community, complaining when protesters accosted another more attractive anti-LGBT activist at a meeting he also attended.
He said: “The queer students showed up looking very Wall Street with their collared office shirts and executive-boardroom mannerisms.
“They flocked to Ryan Anderson with commentary, but then when I presented, they sat quietly through the talk, asked no questions, and left.
“Did they not have any interest in arguing with me or talking to me?
“These queer students had no interest in me other than as an effigy to burn. They were drawn immediately to Ryan Anderson’s prep school looks and Princeton charm.
“It seemed that it would be easier for the queer students to give up their same-sex attraction than it would be to give up their attraction to privileged metro power-brokers similar to themselves.”
Lopez had claimed previously that gay surrogacy would “transform a birth certificate from a document recording where a child came from into a bill of sale and contract for ownership of human chattel.”
