The president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary tells Newsmax he was shocked that the censoring of sermons over gay marriage was happening in Houston.
"Many of us have been warning that this was coming — that the whole gay marriage thing was not about marriage, it wasn't about gay rights, it was about religious freedom, and that sooner rather than later we were going to have this kind of thing happen," Dr. Richard Land told John Bachman on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV Thursday.
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However, he says that "I didn't think it would happen this soon and I didn't think it would happen in my hometown of Houston, Texas. I thought it'd be Los Angeles or New York or San Francisco."
He said that when he first learned of the news that he didn't believe it.
Subpoenas were sent to
Houston pastors Tuesday saying they had to turnover sermons they've written that address homosexuality, gender identity, or any mention of Houston's first openly gay mayor, Annise Parker.
The subpoenas were in response to a movement by local pastors who opposed a law, that has since been thrown out, that said transgender men and women could use whatever public bathroom they wanted.
The Houston mayor pulled the subpoenas later on Wednesday saying that what was being requested was too broad, adding that "its unfortunate that it has been construed as some effort to infringe upon religious liberty,"
Breitbart Texas reported.
Story continues below video.
"It shows that she doesn't have a death wish in terms of politically speaking . . . This is going to be very unpopular in Houston, very unpopular around the world and around the country," Land said.
"I know some of those pastors — she's picking on the wrong people," he explained. "They don't have backup lights."
"We're not going to back up one inch, and we're going to protect our sacred right to preach the word of God in our pulpits," he said.
He said that the potential danger of something like this is that "they're going to try to make any biblical reference to homosexuality hate speech."
"That's why I don't like hate speech laws," the president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary told Newsmax.
"I like making actions have consequences not attitudes and not beliefs," he explained.
"When we start making beliefs criminal then we're violating our freedom of speech and our freedom of religion, protections in the Constitution," he added.
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