Baptist leader: Equal rights for gays is like forcing blacks to serve KKK ceremonies

Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, this week likened equal rights for LGBT people to forcing African-Americans to participate in KKK induction ceremonies.

During a radio interview with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins that was obtained by the blog Good As You on Thursday, Land addressed a recent order by the Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission that required Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips to sell wedding cakes to same-sex couples. A December ruling by the commission had found that Phillips discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to serve them.

"This baker did not refuse to serve these people," Land insisted. "He offered them his services – he just did not want to provide his services as part of a gay wedding ceremony."

"This would be like going to a bakery owned by an African-American, and saying, ‘By the way, you have to bake a cake for a KKK induction ceremony, under penalty of law.’"

In a 2013 radio interview, Land had worried that the LGBT rights movement could force homophobes to be “ostracized to the level of being Ku Klux Klansmen.”

“They do not believe in a live and let live philosophy,” the Southern Baptist leader explained at the time. “Let’s be very clear about what their agenda is, their agenda is to have the homosexual lifestyle affirmed by society as healthy and normal and as a perfectly acceptable to young people and to have those who disagree with that ostracized the level of being Ku Klux Klansmen.”

Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips told Fox News on Thursday that he had decided to stop make wedding cakes for at least the rest of the year after he had been ordered to sell to same-sex couples.

Listen to the radio interview from Family Research Council below.

(h/t: Huffington Post)