Jail This KY Freakazoid for Child Abuse Immediately

No, asshole: the First Amendment does not give you the right to abuse children by threatening them with hellfire and damnation.  Even in your own church or living room that is criminal child abuse, but to do it against the rules of your state government workplace should earn you eternity in real prison.

Think Progress:

The Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) has a policy (Policy 912) that requires that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, and intersex (LGBTQI) juveniles be treated with respect for their identities. A minister who volunteered to work with young people at the Warren County Regional Juvenile Detention Center is now challenging that policy after his services were revoked because he refused to comply with it.

Minister David Wells of the Pleasant View Baptist Church in McQuady, KY is represented by the anti-LGBT Liberty Counsel, which sent a letter to the DJJ on his behalf threatening legal action if the policy is not lifted and Wells reinstated. Wells refused to sign a statement promising to refrain from ever telling juvenile inmates that homosexuality was “sinful.” Specifically, the policy requires that volunteers not use “derogatory language in a manner that conveys bias towards or hatred of the LGBTQI community” and that they “shall not imply or tell LGBTQI juveniles that they are abnormal, deviant, sinful, or that they can or should change their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

Superintendent Gene Wade outlined how Wells could comply with the policy, explaining, “You can give a scripture reference to the kids, and let them look it up, but you can’t read it in their hearing. You can’t say ‘sinful'; you can’t discuss sexual orientation — heterosexual or homosexual — period.” These terms were not satisfactory for Wells to continue his volunteer work at the detention center.

This policy, the Liberty Counsel argues, is viewpoint discrimination under the First Amendment. “By restricting speech which volunteers are allowed to use while ministering to youth detainees, the State of Kentucky and the Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice have violated the protections given to private speech through the First Amendment and the Kentucky Constitution. Policy 912 requires affirmation of homosexuality as a condition of providing spiritual guidance to troubled youth, and singles out a particular theological viewpoint as expressly disfavored by the State of Kentucky. This the State cannot do.”

Yet still again more than ever before proof that freakazoids are unqualified to drive or vote, much less hold any position of public responsibility.