This is un-freakin-believable. A church brutalizes a young man (16!) while trying to pray away the gay. Watch this:
Read some of the CNN interview.
Patricia McKinney, pastor of the nondenominational church who describes herself as a prophet, said she has even been receiving death threats as a result of the video, but doesn't understand the outrage.
"I believe in deliverance, I believe in anointing, I believe in the power of Jesus," she said in a phone interview with CNN. "I've been threatened already, I've been attacked, and it doesn't make any sense to us. Really, what they're doing, they're putting me out there on the mat."
McKinney says she doesn't refer to the events of the video as an exorcism, but rather a "casting out of unclean spirits." She said this isn't the first time that an event like this has taken place at her church, but it is the first one centered around homosexuality.
McKinney said the boy approached the church and told her he wanted to be a pastor, but was struggling with his sexuality. "We allow [gay people] to come into our church. We just don't allow them to come in and continue to live that lifestyle," she said.
"God made Adam and Eve," she said. "He made a woman to be with a man, and a man to be with a woman."
Robin McHaelen, who worked with the 16-year-old boy at the center of the video in her position as executive director of True Colors Inc., a gay youth advocacy and mentoring program in Connecticut, said the video was taped in March. She would not identify the teen.
McHaelen said she doesn't think the church acted maliciously -- but that's part of her problem with the video.
"None of the people in this video were intending to hurt this kid," she said. "They performed this ritual in an attempt to rid him of feelings that he didn't want to have."
The boy is the fifth teen True Colors is aware of that has undergone an event like the one documented in the video. But unlike the boy, not all the teens approached a church or religious organization.
The event, McHaelen said, reflects a culture and society that doesn't believe a person can be both Christian and gay.
"That's what makes me so sad and so mad," she said.
McHaelen said she talked to the boy since the incident and said he's feeling very conflicted and confused in trying to reconcile who he is with his religion.
"He's 16 and having the feelings that he's having, the relationships he's having, and then [he's] being tormented by 'What if I'm going to go to hell because of what I feel and who I am?'" she said.
My God, in what kind of warped world do we live that grown adults with good intentions even conceive that this could be helpful to a child struggling to come to terms with their identity? Can you imagine how scarring it would be to have an exorcism of something is intrinsically part of your soul AND when it doesn't work? Cause it won't work.
You and I know that the only homosexual demon are the nasty little hypocrites who hide in closets and poke the rest of us with whatever power and privilege their fake-straight identity gives them.
This child was conflicted, not possessed. He needed support and encouragement. He also, apparently, needed to be part of a community of faith that doesn't demnonize homosexuals rather than trying to fit into this group of --- I cannot even come up with a term to describe this mindset.
The video speaks for itself. I will say the church took their copy down from their website (their website!). Ha.