Rural North Carolina pastor delivers anti-gay message to graduating seniors

A pastor in rural North Carolina. made national news this week when he told graduating seniors at Kings Mountain High School during a baccalaureate service that if they were homosexual they would go to hell, Sarah Blake-Morgan reports for WBTV 3 in Charlotte. (Best Places map: Kings Mountain, N.C.)

Kings Mountain is a public school, and the service was optional for students. But the remarks still upset and offended parents, Blake-Morgan writes. Parent Chuck Wilson told her, "This is bullying. Bullying doesn't have to happen from the back hallway of a school or a back parking lot. It can happen from the pulpit, it can happen from the stage . . . There are children here. I think there should be some level of responsibility of the speaker coming in to not take advantage of a captive audience . . . It was just simply an inappropriate topic for a baccalaureate service.”

Pastor Scott Carpenter said he has no regrets about his comments, Blake-Morgan writes. He told Blake-Morgan, “Nobody got bashed or anything. All I did was simply speak biblical truth . . . The number one audience that I have to please is God . . . Was I trying to be mean spirited? Absolutely not. Was I trying to hurt somebody's feelings? Absolutely not. I was simply had to do what I had to do as a Christian minister." (Read more)