Indiana Republican Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith shared a post on social media from a church that called for the death of gay people. It’s now been taken down, and his communications team is taking responsibility. Still, Beckwith has a history of virulently anti-LGBTQ+ comments.
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In a June 29 sermon, a lay preacher at Sure Foundation Baptist Church, a small storefront church in Indianapolis, delivered “a mashup of Bible verses dotted with homophobic slurs and tied to Pride Month,” The Indianapolis Star reports.
“Why do I hate sodomites, why do I hate [slur]? Because they attack children, they’re coming after your children, they are attacking them in schools today, and not only schools in public places, and they’re proud about it!” Stephen Falco said during a Men’s Preaching Night service, according to the Star.
“You ought to blow yourself in the head in the back of the head,” he continued. “You’re so disgusting.” The sermon was posted on YouTube but has since been taken down for violating the platform’s terms of service.
The church received much criticism from local LGBTQ+ and faith leaders, but it doubled down. “The Bible is crystal clear that sodomites — homosexuals — deserve the death penalty carried out by a government that actually cares about the law of God,” the church posted on its Facebook page July 3. It was signed by Justin Zhong, whose title is “evangelist.” The church’s website describes him as the congregation’s local leader.
Among the beliefs listed on the site are “We believe that sodomy (homosexuality) is a sin and an abomination before God which God punishes with the death penalty. No sodomite (homosexual) will be allowed to attend or join Sure Foundation Baptist Church.” It is an independent, fundamentalist church but is associated with a congregation in Vancouver, Washington, according to the site. The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated the church as a hate group.
Then Friday, Zhong posted a video on X of Beckwith on an Evansville public TV show called Shively & Shoulders and said the lieutenant governor would be welcome at the church’s services. On the program, recorded in July, Beckwith, among other things, defended his earlier social media post headlined “PRIDE MONTH ALERT: The Rainbow Beast IS Coming For Your Kids!” In that post, he went on to say that libraries are becoming “drag indoctrination centers.”
On Shively & Shoulders, Beckwith also said he would support one exception to abortion bans: If women who become pregnant as a result of rape can have an abortion, the rapist should receive the death penalty. Zhong’s post was then reposted on Beckwith’s X account, but it has now been taken down. Kyla Russell, a reporter with Indianapolis TV station WISH, shared a screen shot of the repost.
Beckwith’s communications director, Jim Kehoe, then gave this statement to WISH: “That repost, which was related to the Lt. Governor’s recent appearance on WNIN, was made by the Lt. Governor’s communications team. Once it was realized this individual was connected to the Sure Foundation Baptist Church the repost was immediately undone. The Lt. Governor unequivocally denounces all calls for violence directed at the LGBTQ+ community.”
Kehoe added that Beckwith does not plan to attend a service at the church. The Advocate has sought further comment from Beckwith’s team but has not received a response.
Besides the Pride Month post, Beckwith has made numerous other incendiary comments about LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups. He identifies as a Christian nationalist and hosts a podcast titled Jesus, Sex, + Politics. In a June episode, he said the LGBTQ+ rights movement is driven by a “demonic spirit.”
“If you’ve ever studied the origins of, just the history of the LGBTQ movement throughout ancient history and all the way up to today, this is the same demonic spirit that basically just keeps coming back again,” he said in the episode, posted by Right Wing Watch. “Back in ancient Israel, there was a goddess, her name was Ishtar, and she was the goddess of transgenderism, a gender-warping goddess. She was a homosexual goddess. Men would give themselves over to lustful acts with other men, women the same, pedophilia, everything like that. They would warp their genders. All those things. Same things that we’re seeing today in the LGBTQ movement.” He also said Ishtar “was represented by rainbows in her eyes.”
Actually, in the ancient Middle East, Ishtar was the goddess of both war and sexual love, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.
Beckwith also drew fire this year by praising the three-fifths compromise in the U.S. Constitution, under which states with slavery could count enslaved people as three-fifths of a person in determining their population, thereby increasing their representation in Congress. He said it kept slavery from being codified in the Constitution. In reality, “it offered white Southerners an immense political reward for enslaving other human beings,” John Krull wrote in a column for The Statehouse File.
19K views · 149 reactions | The Indiana Senate just passed SB 289. During debate, the Senate Democrats compared this bill to the historic three-fifths compromise from the Constitutional Convention.Here is my response to that argument. | Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith
19K views · 149 reactions | The Indiana Senate just passed SB 289. During debate, the Senate Democrats compared this bill to the historic three-fifths compromise from the Constitutional Convention.Here is my response to that argument. | Lt. Governor Micah Beckwith www.facebook.com
The Indiana Senate just passed SB 289. During debate, the Senate Democrats compared this bill to the historic three-fifths compromise from the Constitutional Convention.Here is my response to that...
Beckwith, who was a minister and worked with several right-wing groups before running for office, became Indiana’s lieutenant governor just this year, having been elected in November on a ticket with Gov. Mike Braun. Braun is also deeply anti-LGBTQ+. On his campaign website, he said that “divisive theories like [critical race theory] or discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity have no place in our public schools.” He supported bans on gender-affirming care for transgender minors and on trans students participating in school sports under their gender identity.
Indiana already has both such bans. Braun’s predecessor, fellow Republican Eric Holcomb, signed the gender-affirming care ban into law after expressing some doubts about it, and legislators passed the sports ban over Holcomb’s veto.
This article originally appeared on Advocate: Indiana Lt. Gov. Beckwith shares post from church that called for death to gays; his team walks it back
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