Kent Christmas, preachin’ the hate – Twitter screenshot
Far-right conservative preacher Kent Christmas asked God to “loose a Holy judgment” on the upcoming Barbie movie because it is “full of transsexual and transgender and homosexuality.”
Posted on June 25, a now-viral video shows the Tennessee-based Christmas saying, “I curse in the name of the Lord this new Barbie movie that has been released full of transsexual and transgender and homosexuality in the name of the Lord. May God loose a judge, may God loose a Holy judgment. Hallelujah.”
The movie has yet to be released. There is no indication it will be LGBTQ-focused.
The movie features a slew of stars, including Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Hari Nef, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Emma Mackey, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan, Dua Lipa, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, John Cena, America Ferrara, Will Ferrell, and Helen Mirren.
Director Greta Gerwig says The Wizard of Oz loosely inspired the film. The use of disco music and pink-adorned set leads fans to herald the piece as a “potential camp masterpiece,” PinkNews reported.
This is not the first time the anti-gay Christmas has made far-fetched claims about the LGBTQ community in his 50-year career.
He also claimed he can “immediately tell that someone is gay just by looking at them because the demonic spirit inside of them ‘changes the physical appearance of people.’”
No person affiliated with the movie has expressed annoyance with Christmas’s words.
What has caught the attention of Warner Bros., however, is the film’s ban in Vietnam.
Vietnamese officials banned the movie over a scene with a map “that shows China’s unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea,” Reuters reported.
“The U-shaped ‘nine-dash line’ is used on Chinese maps to illustrate its claims over vast areas of the South China Sea, including swathes of what Vietnam considers its continental shelf,” Reuters continued.
“The map in Barbie Land is a child-like crayon drawing,” a Warner Bros. Film Group spokesperson told Variety. “The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the ‘real world.’ It was not intended to make any type of statement.”
Barbie is rated PG-13 and will be released on July 21, 2023, the same day as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
The Boston Police Department has released photos of eight men suspected of involvement in an alleged hate crime against a gay couple in the city’s Mattapan neighborhood earlier this month. The images, several of them blurry, depict men of varying ages: one in a Red Sox hat with a white shirt and jacket; another with a small white beard wearing a Bass Pro Shop hat and black shirt; and a third, bald and in a maroon V-neck, sporting round sunglasses.
The other five suspects are pictured in varied outfits: a long-sleeved white shirt with jeans and white sneakers; an olive long-sleeve shirt with jeans; a black T-shirt and jacket with light blue pants, with hair in braids; a red sweatshirt with matching shorts; and a black-and-white tracksuit.
The state of Iowa will pay $85,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a group of LGBTQ teens who were expelled from the Iowa Capitol during a 2020 advocacy trip organized by Iowa Safe Schools, after a dispute over bathroom access.
The lawsuit, filed in 2022, claimed that about 150 students and chaperones were unfairly ejected while visiting the Capitol to meet with legislators.
Nate Monson, then the executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, told The Des Moines Register that state troopers barred a smaller group of students from using bathrooms that matched their gender identity and directed them instead to a gender-neutral restroom elsewhere in the Capitol.
An unruly airline passenger ranting about anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories was arrested after flight crew diverted the plane to Chicago out of concern for the safety of others onboard.
The man was aboard a Sun Country flight that left Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport at 7:13 a.m. on October 3. According to passenger Seth Evans, a Minnesota native who now lives in New York, the man acted erratically throughout the flight.
Evans told the Minnesota Star Tribune that the man repeatedly stood up and screamed in between playing rounds of Candy Crush on his phone.
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