Floundering Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams is pulling out all the stops to get as many votes as she can, including speaking at churches. (I bet the Miami Herald won’t accuse her of “Christian nationalism.”)
This past Sunday, she spoke at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Ga., just east of Atlanta, but that appearance might not work so well in her favor.
Fox News reports that the praise for Abrams’ appearance at the church was more than effusive. Pastor Jamal H. Bryant promoted her “historic” appearance on social media for days, claiming that the “next governor” of Georgia would be at New Birth. (Apparently, Bryant has a hard time understanding polling.)
Bryant invited all the girls in the congregation to come to the front to listen to his Spelman College “sister” and urged the congregation to make a big deal of the Star Trek cameo star’s appearance.
“Let me ask that everybody pull your phone out for me, please,” Bryant said. “I want our next governor to go viral from New Birth. Amen. I want her team to see that there was a bump in social media because of her presence from today.”
Abrams told the pastor and his congregation that with “your help and with your prayer, Dr. Bryant, with your aid on Nov. 8, I’ll fight for you.”
Later in the day, Abrams and Bryant appeared together at a rally, with the pastor wearing a shirt with Abrams’ face on it. Yep, cue the eye rolls.
Related: Stacey Abrams’ Embarrassing Weekend
It’s too bad the tech gurus of Star Trek world can’t invent a time machine for Abrams, because she may wish she hadn’t appeared on stage as the “sister” of Bryant. You see, Bryant has a history of disparaging a key Democrat constituency: the LGBTQblahblahblah movement.
Fox News uncovered some statements that Bryant made 10 years ago. (Yes, I agree that we shouldn’t cancel people for the things they said years ago, but if the left can do it to us, why can’t we return the favor? Besides, just track with me here for a minute and you’ll see why this guy should be more controversial.)
Bryant spoke at the Baltimore Empowerment Temple in 2012 and said, for starters, that “homosexuality is not the only sin, but it is a sin.” Okay, so that’s not too provocative since it fits in with thousands of years of orthodox Christian doctrine. But he kept going, stating that it’s the “responsibility” of Christians to make homosexual people “uncomfortable in [their] sin.”
Bryant also slammed Barack Obama — GASP — for his support of gay marriage, calling the Condescender in Chief “black and wrong” and “black and out of order.”
This should be problematic for Abrams because she has carried the endorsement of the pro-gay Human Rights Campaign, who called her “a strong ally to the LGBTQ+ community” who “fought against regressive, anti-equality legislation” and “supported policies like nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Georgians and marriage equality.”
It gets even better. Bryant interviewed Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in 2015, telling the anti-Semitic leader that he was “honored” to speak to him.
“I’m so appreciative to be able to mark in history that I lived in the same chasm of time as one of the greatest leaders of our people,” Bryant said.
Abrams’ campaign didn’t respond to PJ Media’s request for comment, and the Human Rights Campaign refused to comment on the candidate’s appearance with an anti-LGBTQ pastor. We’ll update the story if we hear from either one of them.
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