President Barack Obama received stern criticism from the Rev. Bill Owens, who gave a speech at the March for Marriage in Washington Monday, slamming the president for "deceiving America" about his support for same-sex marriage,
reports the Christian Post.
"When President Obama was running for president, I had some friends in the gay community who informed me that he was going to say that he was for marriage between a man and a woman in his first term to get elected but he would take the issue up in his second term, and that's what he did," said Owens, the president of the Coalition of African American Pastors. "So first of all, he deceived America."
Obama's former top political adviser, David Axelrod, made similar claims in a 2015 book. "Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a 'sacred union,'" Axelrod said, according to
Time.
Owens went on to accuse Obama of wanting to make himself "a king like they have in Africa," and attacked the president's policies regarding transgender bathroom use. "Only a sick man — I mean sick in his mind — would promote a program that men can go in women's restrooms. Only a sick man would promote that."
The Post reported that "guidance" was recently released from the U.S. Justice and Education Departments, stating that federally funded schools can't restrict access to sex-segregated bathrooms or locker rooms and must allow users to choose facilities consistent with their gender identity. Advocates of the policy have campaigned for it as a "civil right."
"The forces will be with you if you stand up. Refuse to obey an unjust law," Owens said,
reports CNS News.com. "I'm going to challenge black America to stand up.
"We let Obama and the gay community take what black people marched and worked for, died for, beaten for, and called this civil rights," he said. "It's not a civil right. It's a civil wrong, and I call all men of all colors to protect your wife, protect your mother, protect your daughter.
"Don't let them get away with men coming in women's restrooms. We have enough perverts. We have enough crazy people, and they will abuse our families."
The March for Marriage, organized annually by the National Organization for Marriage, started in 2013 and attracted between 2,000 and 15,000 attendees its first year. This year's rally only attracted 250, according to
ThinkProgress, which claims to have hand-counted the participants.
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