Embraced by God...

The AIDS Crisis: "God hates fags!"

Background: During the mid-1980s the AIDS crisis became known to most Americans, but to the extent AIDS was seen as the "Gay Disease," few conservative Christians really cared. The Christian Right’s hatred of homosexuals easily translated into an understanding that AIDS was in some sense God’s judgment on the evils of homosexuality. Eventually, more compassionate voices could be heard, but churches around the USA once again started out on the wrong side of an important social issue.

AIDS as God’s judgment on Homosexuals:

"God says...that homosexuality is a perverted and reprobate lifestyle. God also says those engaged in such homosexual acts will receive ‘in their own persons, due penalty of their error.’ God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah primarily because of the sin of homosexuality. Today, He is again bringing judgment against this wicked practice through AIDS....Homosexuals are gaining control of towns and communities....We must preserve America by convicting her of sin and the folly of endorsing a lifestyle that is strangling the very life out of her" (Jerry Falwell in 1987, as quoted in Richard Smith, AIDS, Gays, and the American Catholic Church, 1994, p. 18).

October 23-24, 1999 – Reverend Mel White and 200 members of his GLBT group Soulforce met with the Reverend Jerry Falwell and an equal number of his followers. As a result, both sides agreed to tone down their rhetoric, and Falwell generously offered to keep praying for the salvation of homosexuals.

2000 – No papal apologies to date