A gay reverend has gone viral for his sassy response to a hater who questioned how he could possibly teach Christianity while also sleeping with men–and the reverend’s replies are priceless.
Daniel Brereton, a reverend at St. John’s Dixie Anglican Church in Mississauga, Ontario, shared a tweet containing screenshots of a text exchange he had with an unidentified crank.
“WTF?” the crank began, “How can someone who has sex with men teach people about the Bible?”
Brereton responded, “Sex with ‘men’? The reports of my sex life have been greatly exaggerated.”
Unamused, the hater responded, “Even one man is a sin.”
The reverend wrote back, “You must know my ex.”
The hater then wrote, “You can’t teach the word of God while having sex with men.”
The reverend then sent off a million-dollar retort.
“Are you speaking from experience?” he wrote. “Personally, I’ve never tried doing them at the same time. But I suppose if your camera was stable enough, and your partner quiet enough, and the people in your study group didn’t mind…”
Whoa… Brereton might’ve stumbled onto a hot new kink. We’re not sure if any adult video performers or OnlyFans creators have ever tried combining humping, web-camping, and Bible study, but surely there’s an audience for it — it just seems so… sacre-licious.
Undeterred, the hater replied, “I don’t understand all the people so deceived by you. As a Christian, I would never follow you.”
The reverend accurately responded, “As a Christian, you’re supposed to be following Jesus.”
The hater responded, “At least I don’t f*ck dudes,”
Brereton shot back, “On behalf of every gay man on earth. Thank you.” The shaaaaaade.
“F*ck you,” the hater dumbly responded.
The good rev then clowned the hater, writing back, “Ok, you JUST said you wouldn’t. You’re sending a lot of mixed signals here.”
After that zinger, the hater apparently blocked the reverend from sending him any other messages.
“Well, he finally sent me a clear signal,” Brereton wrote on his tweet containing shots of the exchange. His tweet has gotten over 55K likes as of Wednesday morning.
It’s unclear how the reverend at the hater connected or why the hater seemed so angry yet thirsty for the good rev, but the man of the cloth certainly cut his opponent to shreds.
With his wit (and admittedly good looks), Rev. Brereton is the sort of religious leader we need more of. This exchange is pure gold, but Brereton’s Twitter is also filled with tweets standing up for queer dignity and correcting the misperception that it’s impossible to be gay and Christian.
Haters regularly interpret the Bible to condemn queers (while ignoring its prohibitions against divorce, hypocrisy, and allowing poverty). But most of the Bible’s condemnations against homosexuality are part of ancient Hebrew law which contains prohibitions against shrimp, blended fabrics, and other things that most Christians ignore. Christians also seem to ignore the parts where Jesus stresses the importance of loving literally everyone, whether they’re Christian or not.
Brereton could’ve been much meaner to his hater or ignored him completely. But instead, by standing up for himself, he showed everyone that gay people don’t need to accept shaming from people who claim to speak for God.
“Jesus does say ‘don’t respond to violence with violence,’” the reverend pointed out in another tweet, “but he does NOT tell people to be door mats. He raises the oppressed up into full dignity, he doesn’t tell them they’re earning ‘heaven points’ with every physical and emotional bruise they sustain. Nope.”
Put another way: Stand up to religious bigotry. Jesus and the good reverend command it!
Michael Anderson (left), a survivor of Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, and Matthew Haynes, a founding owner of the club, in a Congressional hearing on anti-LGBTQ+ extremism Wednesday.Tom Williams/Getty Images
Two sides swiftly emerged at Wednesday’s Congressional hearing on anti-LGBTQ+ violence: one that was ready to talk about our community’s rights and protections, and another that just wanted to blame the woke left.
The special hearing on “The Rise of Anti-LGBTQI+ Extremism and Violence in the United States” was assembled in direct response to the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs by a far-right extremist which left five dead. But while the witnesses and Democrats discussed the issue at hand, which outgoing committee chair Carolyn Maloney called “one of the most pressing issues that our nation will face in the years to come,” Republicans focused their efforts on turning anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes into just a symptom of an alleged wave of violent crime, blaming everything from Black Lives Matter and efforts to defund the police to poor border security and fentanyl.
Witnesses at the hearing included Michael Anderson and James Slaugh, two Club Q survivors; Club Q owner Matthew Haynes; and Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the PULSE shooting, all of whom gave impassioned testimony about their experiences, trauma, and hope for the future. “Hate speech turns into hate action, and actions based on hate almost took my life from me at 25 years old,” Anderson told the committee. Wolf echoed the sentiment, calling out “cynical politicians and greedy grifters” like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who willfully “pour gasoline on anti-LGBTQ hysteria” to make money and accumulate political capital.
Haynes, who said attending the signing of the Respect for Marriage Act on Tuesday was “the first joy and pride I have felt since these horrific events at Club Q,” bluntly shared with the committee several examples of anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech he’d received since the shooting. The messages were filled with slurs, professing happiness that five people were dead and disappointment the killer hadn’t shot more.
“I ask you today not simply what are you doing to safeguard LGBTQ Americans,” Haynes said, “but rather what are you and other leaders doing to make America unsafe for LGBTQ people.”
Witnesses also included Human Rights Campaign president Kelly Robinson, who called hate-motivated violence like the Club Q shooting “the tragic result of a society that devalues our lives, particularly the lives of Black and brown transgender and gender-nonconforming people.” Most of the witnesses stressed that Republicans’ fearmongering and misinformation around trans people and drag performers in particular directly emboldened open violence on hospitals, libraries, and on the street.
But Republicans brought one witness of their own to frame their points — Charles Lehman, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, which has long pushed for policies like “broken window” policing that harm marginalized communities. Lehman was on hand not to talk about anti-LGBTQ+ violence in any specific capacity, but to generally advocate for more police funding and harsher federal hate crime penalties, “bringing the full power of the justice system to bear” on offenders.
Lehman’s testimony was an obvious overture to what Republicans really wanted to talk about, the same talking point they’d stressed throughout this year’s midterm campaigns: that violent crime is allegedly on the rise, and it’s actually the Democrats’ fault any of this happened. Kentucky Rep. James Comer, the incoming committee chair who literally opened his remarks with the phrase “thoughts and prayers,” squarely blamed left-wing “defund the police and soft-on-crime policies” for a general rise in violence he denied is unique to LGBTQ+ communities.
“We should be focused on the alarming rise of violent crime across our country, crimes that target all races and ethnicities,” Comer said, citing elevated homicide numbers in several large cities. Recent analyses from both the Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI show that while homicide rates have increased during the pandemic, there was no national increase in overall violent crime over the last three years.
Comer, of course, has a motive for obfuscating culpability: he’s one co-sponsor of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Protect Children’s Innocence” bill, currently in committee, which would make providing a minor with any gender-affirming care a felony and prohibit federal funds from paying for such care.
On Friday, Club Q family and supporters fundraised to reopen the nightlife haven at the center of the Colorado Springs shooting.
Other Republicans followed suit, like Pennsylvania Rep. Fred Keller, who said the committee should be “looking at this holistically as an American crime crisis.” Jody Hice of Georgia, in his last committee meeting as a representative, equated anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech to Maxine Waters’ 2018 comments encouraging people to make then-current Trump administration officials “not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Pat Fallon of Texas, aggressively questioning Wolf, invited comparison to James Hodgkinson, a Bernie Sanders supporter who shot Republican Rep. Steve Scalise and four others in 2017. “None of us blamed Bernie Sanders because he didn’t do it,” Fallon told Wolf, clearly agitated. In fact, some Republicans including then-President Trump did blame Sanders and other Democrats for allegedly inciting the shooting.
David Cicilline, co-chair of the House Equality Caucus, said he was “disappointed, but not surprised” that almost no Republicans asked the witnesses about anti-LGBTQ+ extremism. “Republicans are happy to discuss our community when they’re attacking our rights, when they’re crying on the House floor because they oppose marriage equality,” Cicilline pointed out during the hearing. “But when it comes to actually discussing the violence against our community and its causes, just a quick condemnation of what happened at Club Q, and violence broadly, and nothing more.
As this article makes clear the Proud Boys are the Hitler Brownshirts of our time. The right wing group is to force people to follow the wishes of the right by threats of violence and intimidation. It is domestic terrorism endorsed by the republicans. “While the Proud Boys used to largely host rallies where they were the headliners, now they come in to act as the muscle for other reactionary groups,” Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst Cassie Miller explained. Hugs
The far-right extremist group’s shift in focus reflects the GOP’s renewed attacks on the LGBTQ+ community.
Far-right extremist group the Proud Boys abruptly shifted their focus to anti-LGBTQ+ action in mid-2022. According to a new report from Vice News, the violent all-male, neo-fascist group’s involvement in anti-LGBTQ+ protests tripled this year compared to 2021.
The data comes from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) as well as Vice’s own tracking of Proud Boys activity, which found that 100 percent of anti-LGBTQ+ actions involving the gang took place between late May and December of this year.
The shift reflects a new tactic following the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. Local chapters of the decentralized group have since been forging alliances with other right-wing activists in their communities around culture war issues like anti-vaccine efforts, abortion, masking mandates, and so-called parental rights in education.
“While the Proud Boys used to largely host rallies where they were the headliners, now they come in to act as the muscle for other reactionary groups,” Southern Poverty Law Center senior research analyst Cassie Miller explained.
As baseless attacks labeling the LGBTQ+ community as “groomers” and “pedophiles” have increased this year, so has the Proud Boys’ involvement in anti-LGBTQ+ protests. As Vice reports, members of the gang in at least 11 states showed up at libraries and restaurants hosting drag queen story hours and drag brunches. According to the ACLED, 20 percent of all demonstrations involving Proud Boys since 2020 have turned violent, and members of the group are increasingly likely to be armed.
Most recently, 50 Proud Boys, many of them armed and wearing combat gear, showed up alongside members of other far-right hate groups at a church in Columbus, Ohio, where a holiday drag queen story hour event was scheduled to take place earlier this month.
Increasing Proud Boys activity in the South and Southwest seems to have coincided with increased anti-LGBTQ+ activism from so-called “parental rights” groups and Christian nationalists. “Where these groups have popped up around the country this year, the Proud Boys have followed,” said Southern Poverty Law Center’s Miller.
Miller said that the group appears to be acting “in lockstep” with the GOP and right-wing media in its focus on the LGBTQ+ community.
Even more troublingly, some Proud Boys chapters have apparently made inroads to political legitimacy in their local communities through charity work. ACLED director of communications Sam Jones said this may be a tactic meant to “deepen connections with an existing base in the community, expand local networks, recruit, and draw lines separating the potentially allied in-groups they aim to ‘protect’ from the demonized out-groups that they target.”
Proud BoysPhoto: Shutterstock
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