Posted on 09/22/2004 1:27:10 PM PDT by ItsJeff
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) -- Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart apologized Wednesday for saying in a televised worship service that he would kill any gay man who looked at him romantically.
A complaint was filed with a Canadian broadcasting group, and Swaggart said his Baton Rouge-based Jimmy Swaggart Ministries has received complaints from gay groups over the remarks made on the Sept. 12 telecast.
In the broadcast, Swaggart was discussing his opposition to gay marriage when he said "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry."
"And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died," Swaggart said to laughter and applause from the congregation.
On Wednesday, Swaggart said he has jokingly used the expression "killing someone and telling God he died" thousands of times, about all sorts of people. He said the expression is figurative and not meant to harm.
"It's a humorous statement that doesn't mean anything. You can't lie to God - it's ridiculous," Swaggart told The Associated Press. "If it's an insult, I certainly didn't think it was, but if they are offended, then I certainly offer an apology."
Audio recordings of the Sept. 12 statements have circulated on gay-themed Web sites.
One complaint was sent to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a self-regulating industry group that enforces broadcast standards, after a Toronto television station broadcast the service, said Ann Mainville-Neeson, the group's executive director.
Cheryl Jacques, head of the Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign, which represents homosexuals, bisexuals and transgendered people, said Swaggart should preach equality for all Americans.
"Apologies don't discourage violence - action does. We hope that he takes action," Jacques said. "His language only encourages an environment where hate crimes occur."
Swaggart was a popular television evangelist during the 1980s until a 1987 sex scandal involving a prostitute that he met in a seedy New Orleans motel. Swaggart never confessed to anything more than an unspecified sin. A few years later, he was stopped by police while driving in California with a suspected prostitute in his car.
For out of the heart the mouth speaketh. The man is a whitewashed tomb filled with dead men's bones and all manner of rotteness. Flee from such men.
It's sad, it really is - about what is going on in our society and elsewhere -
If I may - Once upon a time there was a time and place for everything - now - everything has come under one control. I put it to "politics", for lack of another word, and it's having a devastating impact all across the globe.
People are being told how to speak, how to think - and on and on it goes. Reminds me of mice and men - the mice are winning big time in my opinion -
For gosh sakes we are all just funny little foreign people to the Canuks, and it's not likely Jimmy Swaggart is going to be mobbed by a gang of gay Canadian men anyway ~ one would hope ~ but then again, after they've been locked up in the ice and snow all winter who knows what they might do when the ice breaks on the Yukon, eh?!
This also proves that there really is no freedom of speech in Canada. It's just another police state run by a snobbish elite who pick their noses and think we don't see it!
Yup, Swaggart is a fool of the first order.
Tome for Cheryl Jacques to go back home wheere he/she belongs, eh?!
Such a statement was as wrong then as it is now. We recognize it as such today. That's a good thing. Statements like this don't reflect well on Christians.
What does that make the people who send him money?
I saw his routine the other day, and laughed out loud at his anti-gay rant. Classic Swaggart. It's hard to believe that anyone would actually take offense at it. Rather, they should cherish his denunciations. It's like being insulted by Don Rickles.
I do believe you missed the point -
And I could name a few people I believe have a screw loose - but where would it get me - ? Attacked, maybe :)
Sticks and stones may break my back/bones - but words will never hurt me - Seems I've heard that someplace -
Evangelicals? I thought Swaggart was a Pentacostal ~ there's a difference ~ folks who belong to other church organizations should be required to learn those differences before opening their mouths.
Oh for crying out loud. It was a JOKE!
He was attempting to have a little, silly humor during his monologue. It wasn't too funny, but it was harmless.
Some people need to lighten up, freepers included.
I thought he was that evangelist who wrote the book " A Ministers Guide to Lay People"
He says he was just joking but Jesus said:
...for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
Math 12:34
What comes out of our mouths is what is truly in our hearts.
I haven't seen any of those TV personalities in years. Actually, I haven't seen any TV for several years except in the electronics department when I need some CD-Rs or something. People like those and Dan Rather are some of the reason I don't watch TV anymore.
Speaking of wacked-out TV "preachers", what ever happened to Ernest Ansley?
I don't think he bothered to write a book about it. We all know he likes girls ~ to an extreme!
So have men changed, or has freedom of speech been eroded, or has the cultural freedom for men to express their machoism been denied? I think it's the latter two. I don't like Swaggart, but this particular statement doesn't bother me at all.
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