AIDS Blamed on Acceptance of Gay Life Style
The president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination says God created AIDS to show displeasure with America’s acceptance of the homosexual life style.
In an interview in the San Francisco Examiner published Friday, the Rev. Charles Stanley, head of the 14.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, claimed that the Bible is “very clear on homosexuality.”
“It is a sinful life style, according to Scripture, and I believe that AIDS is God indicating his displeasure and his attitude toward that form of life style, which we in this country are about to accept,” he said.
Stanley was dismayed with the public response to actor Rock Hudson’s death from AIDS in October.
“It’s almost as if he’s becoming more heroic dying of AIDS, with all the publicity he’s gotten,” he said.
“Homosexuality has been going on for a long time, but as it has become an acceptable life style in the minds of many people, we have AIDS. Why not AIDS 50 years ago, 100 years ago?”
Stanley, a nationally syndicated TV evangelist and fundamentalist pastor of Atlanta’s First Baptist Church, was in San Jose to address an evangelism meeting.
AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, mostly affects male homosexuals and drug addicts.
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