A Christian pastor who opposed Facebook’s gay pride flag emoji said he has been receiving hate mail, threats, and has even been sent feces and gay porn.
Christian Today reports that Pastor Rich Penkoski of West Virginia is the leader of the Warriors for Christ Facebook page. The page has around 200,000 followers.
Penkoski said that anyone who posted the gay pride flag on the Warriors for Christ page will be banned. Soon after, Penkoski began receiving backlash against this decision.
The onslaught of hate mail and threats was exacerbated by a post by Patheos blogger Hemant Mehta, the “Friendly Atheist.”
"The 'Friendly Atheist' character wrote a blog about us and it snowballed from there,” said Penkoski. “Every single online gay blog or newspapers, they all picked it up and went with their version of it. We got hammered. It must have been overnight. We banned over 900,000 people. We received messages of 'You should die,' 'Go kill yourself.'"
Penkoski said he also received feces and gay porn in the mail, as well as thousands of spam calls because people had gotten his phone number and signed him up to receive calls from gay dating websites, car insurance companies, and other advertisements.
Penkoski was so inundated by the threats and calls that he had to change his address to the local police station as well as change his phone number.
Nevertheless, Penkoski remains committed to his stance against the gay pride symbol and what it stands for. "The thing about the rainbow flag is nobody asked why we didn't want it on our page. The issue was that the rainbow emoji is a pride symbol for homosexuality and we are a Christian ministry. We don't celebrate sin and we are not going to embrace it now. We know, as Christians, that sin leads to death."
Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/nito100
Publication date: July 7, 2017
