Bible Baptist Tabernacle pastor Bobby Leonard is under fire after preaching that he'd let a man "go free" for raping a woman who wore shorts because he's "a man's a man."
Leonard's remarks to his congregation during a service in Monroe, North Carolina, went viral after they were disseminated by investigative journalist Julie Roys, who leads The Roys Report, a Christian media outlet.
He said:
"You find more women going into a place with shorts than you will women with pants and dresses put together."
"Try. If you've got time, try. Have your boy keep watch for it. Have your girl keep watch for it."
"And you know, I used to say this... I haven't said this in a long time. You ready?"
"I say that if you dress like that and get raped and I'm on the jury, he's going to go free. I'm right though because a man's a man."
You can hear what Leonard said in the video below.
Leonard's remarks were swiftly condemned by the Republican Accountability Project, which, through its account on X, formerly Twitter, called them "sickening."
Many were outraged by Leonard statements.
Sadly, similar remarks and misogynistic comments from evangelical pastors are a feature, not a bug.
In 2021, Dr. Burnett L. Robinson, the former senior pastor of the Grand Concourse Seventh-day Adventist Church in New York City, stepped down from his position after being placed on leave. His departure followed a controversial sermon in which he made alarming statements, including the assertion that "the best person to rape is your wife."
The following year, Jonathan Shelley, a preacher of the Stedfast Baptist Church in Hurst, Texas, who has previously made headlines for his extremist anti-LGBTQ+ views, declared that women should not be allowed to hold political office.
Shelley said it's "sick how many men today let women just run our country because they’re too cowardly to stand up to silly women." He went even further, saying he wouldn't even vote for Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene—a darling of the far-right—because she's a woman.
