Candidates support LGBTQ rights, but ...
Pastor who says being gay a sin ‘enough to send you to hell’ was campaign stop for Dems
LAS VEGAS >> Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Cory Booker attended services this weekend at a Baptist church led by a pastor who has called being gay a sin — “enough to send you to hell” — and Bernie Sanders held a town hall at the church last month.
It isn’t clear what the three presidential candidates — all staunch supporters of LGBTQ rights — knew about the Rev. Robert E. Fowler Sr.’s position
on homosexuality when they campaigned at Las Vegas’ Victory Missionary Baptist Church, but his views are hardly a secret: A 2017 Las Vegas Review-Journal column about his perspective on gay rights shows up on the first page of results for a Google search of his name.
Fowler said in a 2013 radio interview that “whether you commit adultery, whether you commit fornication, whether you’re a child molester, you gossip, you lie, you cheat on your taxes, you don’t pay your tithes, things of that nature — all of that is wrapped together as sin, along with homosexuality. And so at our church, we don’t believe that there’s any one sin that’s greater than anything else.”
And he said he still held those views in an interview
Sunday night with the Bay Area News Group: “Homosexuality, adultery, fornication, those are all sexual sins addressed in Scripture.”
Asked whether he believes homosexuality and child molestation are comparable sins, Fowler said, “Any sin, if you break the law in one area, you’ve broken it in all areas. If you mess up in one area, that’s enough to send you to hell — so any sin is pretty bad for me.”
The visits to the church illustrate potential hazards as Democrats vie for voters in battleground states with more conservative views.
Melissa Michelson, a Menlo College political science professor who has written about issues of LGBTQ rights and religion in politics, said presidential campaigns need to closely vet local leaders hosting their events.
“It’s a tough line, because they want to reach out to folks who are members of those congregations, and
there are probably members of the congregation who also don’t believe those views,” Michelson said. “But it is important for candidates to be more careful about this sort of thing, because it sends a message that that sort of language isn’t necessarily a deal breaker.”
The church, a few miles north of the Las Vegas Strip, is one of the most influential African American Baptist congregations in the city. Fowler has led Victory since 1996.
Harris attended services at Victory on Sunday morning, while Booker was there Saturday evening. Sanders held a campaign town hall there on July 6, and both he and Hillary Clinton courted voters there during the 2016 presidential primary race. Booker also has been to the church at least once before, Fowler said.
In her speech Sunday at the church — the morning after news broke of a second
mass shooting in the U.S. in less than 24 hours — Harris declared that “Hate without response will lead to destruction.”
“Whenever that hate reveals itself, it is incumbent on us to speak up and speak out, and it is incumbent upon us to agree that whomever is the subject of the hate should never be made to fight alone,” she said, to a chorus of amens.
A Harris spokeswoman said in a statement Monday that “Senator Harris’ support and advocacy for LGBTQ equality has been unwavering throughout her career. She will continue to visit houses of worship across the country to address congregants about the pressing issues we face as a nation.”
Booker’s and Sanders’ campaigns did not respond to a request for comment.
All three senators have been longtime champions of gay rights, with Harris officiating same-sex weddings
in San Francisco in 2004 and Booker doing the same for the first legal unions in New Jersey. Sanders was one of the few members of the House of Representatives to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act, which blocked the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage, in the ’90s.
There’s a big difference between candidates speaking at a church led by a pastor who has voiced anti-gay views and endorsing those views themselves, LGBTQ activists said. Still, they urged the presidential contenders to make an effort to speak out about equality in those settings.
“I don’t think we would ask any candidate not to go somewhere or not to speak to a faith community, and I would imagine that many of the congregants at that church do not share their pastor’s views,” said Samuel Garrett-Pate, a spokesman for LGBTQ rights group Equality California. “We would hope they would use these opportunities to speak with pastors that they are meeting with or to whose congregations they’re speaking to about the importance of affirmative and supportive language for the LGBTQ community.”
Michelson said deciding to visit those churches could disappoint some of the candidates’ gay and lesbian supporters.
“No one is saying that you can’t be an LGBTQ rights supporter and also visit houses of worship,” she said. “But visiting a house of worship where the religious leaders are not supporters is a choice, and it sends a message that those views are not abhorrent.”
Fowler said his views on LGBTQ issues never came up in his conversations with Harris or Booker at the church this weekend.
“I don’t believe in being a one-item voter that everyone has to agree with me on this particular item,” he said.