Oprah Winfrey explains why she’s happy to ‘go to hell’ for supporting LGBT+ rights in amazing 1997 clip
(YouTube/OWN)
Oprah Winfrey said she’s happy to “go to hell” for supporting LGBT+ rights after an audience member called her out for interviewing Ellen Degeneres.
The Oprah Show episode, which aired in 1997, featured audience members asking Winfrey about her decision to interview DeGeneres about coming out. DeGeneres revealed to Winfrey how she coped with coming out and how her family saw her sexual orientation as a danger.
In a subsequent episode, aired after the Ellen DeGeneres interview, Winfrey answered questions from the audience about why she decided to give DeGeneres a platform to speak about her experience as part of the LGBT+ community.
One audience member said she had “seen it in the Bible” that “homosexuality is wrong”. She felt that, if Winfrey is “going to represent yourself as a Christian” and support LGBT+ rights, then it’s “double standarding”.
But Oprah Winfrey hit back at the religious audience member. She said she had a “different view of Christian” than the other woman did, and she didn’t “expect to change her beliefs”.
“The God I serve doesn’t care whether you’re tall or short or whether you were born Black or Asian or gay,” Winfrey said.
She went on to explain how she was late to the show because, when she was in the makeup room, she was arguing with somebody who said “all gay people are going to hell” and now Winfrey would be as well.
“I take full responsibility for my going to hell or heaven,” Winfrey declared. “I feel that everybody who’s concerned about me now going to hell because I’m doing the Ellen DeGeneres show… should take that energy and try to create a little heaven here on earth for everybody.”
She explained that she believed God created Ellen, and if she is gay, “I believe God created her gay.”
The religious audience member then said Oprah Winfrey couldn’t “stand up there” on the show and “in front of this whole American society” and say that she supports LGBT+ people.
“I support her right to be who she thinks she is,” Winfrey said.
