FIGHTING WORDS

Religious Officials Set Nike Bonfire After Company Drops Manny Pacquiao

manny-pacquiao-gay-instagram-bible-verse__oPtWell, a group of people have started burning shoes to demonstrate their hatred of queer people, so hopefully this doesn’t graduate into burning people.

The bonfire comes after boxer/politician Manny Pacquiao made an instagram post that called for gays to be put to death. (Seems like a nice guy! Definitely deserves to be in office!)

Nike used to pay Pacquiao for endorsements, but they cut him off after he made some anti-marriage-equality statements a few days before the death-to-gays post. Specifically, he said that same-sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to get married; and that homosexuality it wrong because it doesn’t exist in nature. Obviously he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but hey, since when did facts matter?

“We find Manny Pacquiao’s comments abhorrent,” said an anonymous source at Nike, so that’s nice. After they ended the relationship, Manny put out a video doubling down on his hate, reiterating that he doesn’t like queer people; and then he posted to instagram a Bible quote that says gay people should be put to death. If his relationship with Nike hadn’t been ended already, it certainly would have been then. Good luck finding someone new to pay you for wearing their shoes.

Anyway, now some homophobes have decided that they hate Nike, in addition to LGBTs, and that starting fires is a good way to express that.

“We don’t hate LGBT people, we hate their agenda,” says one guy in a video of the fire. (OK, but the fact that you think there’s an agenda kind of gives away that you hate them.)

Not too surprisingly, the video was uploaded by a religious official. His name’s Bishop Oriel M. Ballano, and relatively little is known about him. But we can probably guess how he feels about same-sex couples.

So let’s see here: we have one guy using religion to justify the idea that queers should be put to death; and we have another religious guy setting things on fire to symbolize his feelings about queers. Seems like they’ve set up some really awesome, supportive, safe conditions!

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