Values Voter Summit: The Gay-Bashing Bishop

Bishop Wellington Boone, a frequent speaker at Promise Keepers events, reveled in what he thought would be shocking the polite crowd with his unapologetic attacks on gays and anyone who supports them. He touted a flyer he’d written called “The Rape of the Civil Rights Movement,” which he said explained how “sodomites” were hijacking the civil rights to “promote perversion.”

After recounting the history of violence and oppression against African Americans, from deaths on the middle passage through slavery and Jim Crow, he hollered, “You tell me a gay has a right to get in on some of that? Get out of here!”

Boone recalled that as a young person, he and his friends used the words “faggot” and “sissy” to refer to people who didn’t stand on principle. “God has not called us to be sissies!” Boone seemed disappointed that his gay-bashing hasn’t gotten more notice. “I want the gays mad at me. I am not on enough of their hit lists.”

Boone also seemed to long for an unapologetically Christian nation, when anyone he derides as “unbiblical” wouldn’t be serving in office. He read from what he described as an 18th century constitution for Delaware, which required al office holders to pledge fealty to a Christian creed. And he mocked the notion that someone running for Congress would not be “biblically based.” “How can someone that doesn’t feel the need for God lead me?”