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8 July 2021 10:34 AM

Leeds crowds stand up to hateful homophobic street preaching

Footage captured recently sees defiant crowd standing up to hate on the streets of the city.

By Alastair James

Words: Alastair James; pictures: Twitter @Dwyernator and LeedsLive

There aren’t many ways of sticking it to a homophobic preacher to make it clear that we’re here and we’re queer, but kissing in front of them and making off with their loudspeaker is a rather good way of going about it.

Video footage has been circulated online of a crowd gathered around a preacher in Leeds who was spouting vile sentiments such as, “It’s time to get right with God” and telling people they had to “repent”.

Standing up to the homophobe, members of the crowd can be seen shouting back, with one couple kissing in front of him in defiance of the hate he espoused.

“You’re being hateful, my dear!”

In the video circulated on Facebook and shared by Leeds Live, the preacher can be seen accusing the crowd of being “hateful” by countering him.

One person yells back, “You’re being hateful, my dear!”

The same person adds: “God thinks you need to crawl back into whatever hole you came out of and go back into it, my dear.”

The preacher delivers a truly awful rhyme that’s worse than the kind commonly heard in school playgrounds: “The rectum was created for defecation, not for penetration”, adding, “you need to learn how to use your bodies properly.”

To this, one person in the crowd responds: “Oh! I know how to use it very well!”

In the video, two women are then seen kissing in front of the man to cheers from everyone else. The preacher can then be heard over the crowd’s cheers saying, “You must repent!”

He continues, “You can scoff me, you can persecute me, you can pull me down… still I’m going to love you… Funny, that seems to be what he wants to do to us…

“Woooooo!”

Almost exactly a month ago a preacher, who looks similar to the one from this week’s footage, was in the same spot in the Briggate area, also espousing homophobia. One man can also be seen being taken away by the police.

In that incident, the man was also spouting hate and again was challenged by crowds.

In one heroic moment, as seen in a Twitter video, a member of the crowd or passer-by (we don’t know,, but either way we love him) can be seen taking the man’s speaker away, to cheers from onlookers.

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