Pastor Alistair Begg's podcast pulled over his advice that a woman attend LGBTQ wedding
An Ohio pastor was removed from a Christian radio network over his advice that a grandmother attend her son's wedding to a transgendered person.
In a September episode of his podcast on American Family Radio, Alistair Begg recounted a time when he advised the grandmother to go to the wedding.
"Well, here’s the thing: your love for them may catch them off guard, but your absence will simply reinforce the fact that they said, ‘These people are what I always thought: judgmental, critical, unprepared to countenance anything,'" Begg said on the podcast.
The comments reappeared on social media, leading the network to remove Begg's half-hour weekday program "Truth for Life" on Jan. 24, according to The Pink News.
American Family Association did not respond to USA TODAY's request for comment on Wednesday.
In a statement sent to Fox News on Tuesday, the association said that "members of our leadership team held a call with Alistair Begg’s team and were unsuccessful in convincing them of his error."
"At American Family Association, we believe it to be an act of unfaithfulness to God to attend a ceremony that celebrates any union outside of the biblical model of marriage as being between one man and one woman," according to the statement. "As a result of this, we will no longer air Pastor Alistair Begg’s Truth for Life program."
Pastor: 'I'm not ready to repent over this. I don't have to'
In a sermon on Sunday, Begg defended his advice, calling the situation, "a storm in a teacup."
"I'm not ready to repent over this. I don't have to," Begg said.
Begg said that gay marriage went against biblical teachings and told a story where he said to an audience at a Christian college: "The only place for sexual relationships is within a heterosexual, monogamous relationship between one man and one woman, for life."
Begg also said that those who condemned LGBTQ people were not practicing the teachings of Jesus.
"What happens to homosexual people is that they are either reviled or affirmed," Begg said. "The Christian has to say we cannot treat you in either of those ways. The reason that we can't revile you is the same reason why we can't affirm you because of the Bible, because of God's love."