Pastor Dewey Smith's Pro-Gay Sermon Deserves a 'HALLELOO!'

The black church hasn't always been the most welcoming to the LGBT community. Hell, you can say that about a lot of churches, but the black church often serves as the bedrock of the black community so that you can trace a lot of the homopobia in the black community back to the teachings of the black church. But Georgia Pastor Dewey Smith challenged those teachings in a fiery sermon calling out homophobic hyocrisy that will give you life no matter your beliefs.

Put on your sassy Sunday hats because we're going to chuuuuuuuuch!

And God said to me, here's the problem. You guys in the church can be so hypocritical. He said, in the African-American church, you really gotta be careful. I said, "What do you mean?" He said, because you are guilty of condemning the Supreme Court system and preaching against something, but if you look at half of our choirs --

And a great number of our artists that we call "abominations," that we call "demons," that we demonize and dehumanize; the same people that we use -- and we don't say nothing about the gay choir director because he's good for business.

As long as the choir sounds good, I ain't saying nothing about his sexuality. We have done what the slave master did to us: dehumanize us, degrade us, demonize us but then used them for our advantage.

It's hypocritical to talk about the Supreme Court and calling them Sodom and Gomorrah, which is not what it's all about, but if that's the case, half of our churches have been Sodom and Gomorrah for a hundred years!

On one hand you quote homosexuality as an abomination from Leviticus, but you say that after you eat some shrimp, some catfish and some lobster. You quote Leviticus while you're wearing a wool blend suit. It's also in Leviticus that you shouldn't wear mix linens.

[Ed. note: who knew Leviticus was the original Fashion Police?]

Here is my point: we pick and choose the scriptures that we want to use beat folk up with, rather than look at our own lives.

If God wanted to judge America, he wouldn't need the Supreme Court system. If he wanted to judge America 'cause of sin, he would've judge me in '88 when I was at the Freaknik in Atlanta! Y'all ain't saying nothing to me!

[Ed. note: I don't even know how we got back to the '80s but I'll give it one of these anyway]

What are we going to do about the people who been born this way? What about the people that we think are "nasty"? These folks are "abominations," they're "nasty" -- tell you what you do then, go find every song that's been written by a gay person for the last hundred years. And don't sing it in church. Let's see how many songs you can minister on that Sunday.

Bishop, don't tell me what the Bible says about homosexuals and you change wives like we change underwear. Sit yo' self -- your hypocritical self down!

We all gotta look at ourselves! We all need Jesus!

I'm not even religious but I'm about to put on my Sunday best, run to a church, catch the holy ghost, wrestle it to the ground, take off my wig and start doing back handsprings down the aisle.

Check out Pastor Smith's glory, glory halleloo sermon below:

Les Fabian Brathwaite -- the Freaknik in '88, though.

[h/t: HuffPo]