#2425: Patrick Wooden

Patrick Wooden is a North Carolina pastor and anti-gay activist who is somewhat disconcertingly obsessed with anal sex and graphic descriptions of anal sex. His contributions have been promoted by the National Organization for Marriage and, in particular, Peter LaBarbera. Wooden, one of the chief organizers for the North Carolina amendment to ban same-sex marriage in the early 2010s and far from a fringe figure in North Carolina political circles, maintains that homosexuality is a “wicked, deviant, immoral, self-destructive, anti-human sexual behavior” that would “most certainly mean the extinction of the human race”.

And of course, given how minds like Wooden’s work, there are conspiracies. The medical community, for instance, is, according to Wooden, suppressing the truth about the medical problems homosexuality leads to, since the truth would otherwise make people “gag and no one would want to be in a lifestyle like that;” for example, according to Wooden, by the time gay men reach middle age they “have to wear a diaper or a butt plug just to be able to contain their bowels” because of “what happens to the male anus.” Gay men, according to Wooden, regularly shove objects such as cellphones, baseball bats and animals up their anuses – one might wonder how he gets his ideas – and he has claimed that he personally knows a gay person who “literally died in diapers”. According to Wooden, anal obsession is “the very basis of homosexuality”, which is a rather noteworthy claim coming from him, given his obsession with anal sex.

 

Here is Wooden’s first stab at a criticism of Obama’s statement in support of marriage equality. He has also tried to argue (well: claim) that Obama’s support for gay rights is hurting black families, since parents would have to explain to their kids why the president supports things he they don’t like – and haven’t black people suffered enough already without having to do that? It was particularly hurtful to Wooden that the Democratic Party platform “actively supports evil” by endorsing same-sex marriage (“the greatest oxymoron that I know”) and that supporters of same-sex marriage were embarking on such “an evil endeavor” back in 2012, since it’s not like he could have voted for Romney in the 2012 election either, given that Romney is a “a bishop in a cult”. Here is Wooden fuming over the fact that Pete Buttigieg was allowed to speak in a church in 2019, and here is Wooden more recently attacking Kamala Harris for “trying to turn America into Sodom and Gomorrah” since she officiated same-sex weddings while serving as California’s attorney general.

 

Addressing bullying of (and suicide rates among) LGBT people, Wooden says that instead of showing more tolerance, the families of such people should have “whooped” them and that it is “normal” for men to react violently to a gay man they perceived to be flirting with them. Of course, Wooden hastens to add that there is “no bigotry” against gays and lesbians in his or his followers’ efforts, so you better believe him.

 

Meanwhile, the entertainment industry is doing its worst to ruin America –guided and led as it is by none other than Satan himself. The show Glee, for instance, was satanic for trying to portray homosexuality not as a “wicked, perverse lifestyle that destroys people” but instead as “two clean cute little boys holding hands acting like two little effeminates.” And in Wooden’s imagination, “Satan has used Tyler Perry’s character Madea” and Martin Lawrence’s character Big Momma to promote “perversion” among African Americans.

 

Here is Wooden and LaBarbera discussing transgender issues and Chaz Bono, whom Wooden asserts is under “the influence of the Devil, demon spirits [and] spirits of perversion.”

 

Diagnosis: His bigotry, hate, obsession with anal sex and positive view of violence is the stuff of cartoon villains. But Wooden actually does seem to have a bit of a sympathetic audience and is not without political pull. Staggering.