Lesbians share passionate kiss to protest homophobic preacher at Pride
Lesbian couples protested the homophobic preacher by kissing in his video. (Torch of Christ Ministries/ YouTube)
Multiple lesbian couples protested a homophobic preacher with love by kissing in front of him at the Pride parade in Auckland, New Zealand.
Phillip Blair is an anti-LGBT+, anti-abortion American preacher who runs Torch of Christ ministries.
He made international headlines last year when he was filmed shouting at a man in a wheelchair and telling him that he was “too bitter to be healed”.
Blair has also often spouted sexist and anti-feminist rhetoric. This month, he wrote on Facebook: “Jehovah God: male authority. Christ Jesus the Lord: male authority. Husband, leader of the home: male authority.
“The Bible is clear that the head of leadership in the home is the husband. All beliefs otherwise is to rebel against God’s design.
“Feminism will not make you happy, and it’s a deception created out of disorder and chaos.”
Blair recently uploaded a video of him preaching hate at this month’s Auckland Pride parade, but he was not prepared for the love-filled counter-protest by queer attendees.
Describing the video on the Torch of Christ ministries YouTube channel, Blair said he attended the parade to protest “a celebration of sin and rebellion.”
While he yelled things like “you are celebrating debauchery, darkness has come upon our land” and “you must repent or you will perish”, lesbian couples began positioning themselves in the background of the video and kissing.
Blair later described the kisses as “very vile and lewd sexual acts”.
(Torch of Christ Ministries/ YouTube)
At one point, an attendee of the Pride parade came over and asked if she could “have a chat” with the homophobic preacher.
She said: “I heard you talking earlier about how our community has higher rates of depression and suicide.
“It does! Our community does have higher rates of depression and suicide, do you think that acts like this contribute to that? Do you understand why this is really damaging?”
Blair responded that Jesus could bring LGBT+ people “peace” and “the change that is necessary”.
But she replied: “Does this not look peaceful to you? This place where there is so much love and so much acceptance does not look peaceful to you?
“It’s nice that you’re passionate but if we wanted you we would come to you, and I don’t think it’s fair to you to be here, and to be so loud and so intimidating.”
Amazingly, the couples who kissed on camera even prompted some backlash against Blair from members of his ministry.
The preacher wrote on Facebook: “A handful of people have been wondering why I keep posting pictures of women kissing. The answer is that I’m not.
“I have been sharing multiple news articles from media outlets… The articles are about lesbians kissing while we were preaching repentance. I do not choose what pictures they use as thumbnails for their articles.”
