Pastors aligned with the Religious Right are still insisting that they will be thrown in prison any day now.
Today a group of Michigan pastors held a rally to declare that they are getting “ready to go to jail” if a non-discrimination bill passes the state legislature. Stacy Swimp warned that the “anti-freedom” gay rights movement is bent on putting pastors behind bars, while another pastor claimed that his “rights are being threatened.”
The group came out to protest a bill to add sexual orientation and gender identity protections to the state’s nondiscrimination law, the 1976 Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which already covers categories including “religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, or marital status.”
One Michigan Republican politician — who has a past record of breaking into cars in order to masturbate to the sound of their engines — urged people to leave the state if the bill wins final approval.
PrideSource has the details of today’s rally:
Pastors and Christian leaders gathered on the steps of the state capitol Wednesday morning to demand the state legislature refuse to amend Michigan’s civil rights act to include the LGBT community.
“The homosexual movement is an anti-freedom movement,” declared Stacy Swimp, a right wing advocate and minister in Flint and Jackson. Swimp is also a convicted felon. He spent time in Michigan’s prison system after being convicted in 1994 of assault with intent to murder.
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Pastor Tim Berlin of Warren told the crowd, inclusion of the LGBT community in the civil rights act was “a dangerous slippery slope to an unknown destination.”
Bridgeport minister R.B. Ouellette said the group did not seek “to deny anyone their rights,” adding, “Our rights are being threatened.”
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Swimp said if the amendment is passed, Christians will disobey the law.“We must be ready to go to jail if we resist,” he told those gathered.
