Americans For Truth About Homosexuality’s Peter LaBarbera stopped by VCY America’s “Crosstalk” program on Wednesday to discuss the debate over legislation in Arkansas and Indiana that would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT customers in the name of “religious liberty.”
Although both measures still have the potential to license discrimination, each has been softened by lawmakers in the wake of controversy, which LaBarbera and “Crosstalk” host Jim Schneider attributed to the “spirit of Antichrist” in the gay rights movement.
At the end of the program, a listener called in to share her views on the Antichrist. “I believe that there are several Antichrists,” she said, “and I believe one is the gay liberation movement and another Antichrist, I believe, is some parts of the government in Iran that are always talking about destroying Israel.”
“Certainly the spirit of Antichrist is in the movement that is a very assault at how he designed man and woman to be,” Schneider agreed. “Thank you. That is indeed the spirit of Antichrist. And especially when we see the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Peter, the attacks against it, that is a spirit of Antichrist saying that we cannot act upon the convictions that God’s word provides for us.”
LaBarbera responded that this is “absolutely” the case and that there is now an Antichrist-driven situation in the U.S. in which “Christians have to go to the back of the bus.”
Soon afterwards, another listener called in with another biblical question, asking LaBarbera if he ever brings up the story of Sodom and Gomorrah when he’s giving anti-gay talks.
LaBarbera responded that he does sometimes bring up the story of the cities that were destroyed by God as punishment for sin, but that people are often “ignorant” about what that has to do with the United States, where “the things homosexuals do in private, the orgies, etc…are every bit as evil as what we’d done in Sodom.”
“Jim, I think we would both agree that in some aspects America has surpassed Sodom in the evil that it allows,” he said. “We can’t all talk about it on this show, but I mean I’ve been to events that are incredibly perverse in their public events in San Francisco. And the things that homosexuals do in private, the orgies, etc., I think are every bit as evil as what we’d done in Sodom. We don’t know exactly what we’d done but we have an idea from the word of God.”
“So we’ve reached that level and we’re wondering what punishment does God have for us since we’re allowing the promotion of this in our nation,” he warned.
Finally, LaBarbera and Schneider got a call from a listener who said that he was a barber who wasn’t “against homosexuals” but maintained that he had the right to refuse service to a gay person because they might have AIDS.
“I’m a barber by trade and I’m not against homosexuals, I’m just against the lifestyle, so I get a one in my chair, I have the right to refuse not to shave his neck or use any implement that might cause blood because I don’t know if he’s got AIDS or anything,” he said.
LaBarbera, who earlier in the program had said that Christians wouldn’t refuse service to gay people, just to their weddings, didn’t address the issue directly but agreed that gay people have brushed “the safety of people” aside in their “fanatical push for gay rights.”
