Timbre of a TimeFree Mind

(AP)

A complaint filed with a Canadian broadcasting council has prompted evangelist Jimmy Swaggart to say he regrets talking about killing gay men in a televised worship service.

Audio clips purporting to be of the Sept. 12 Swaggart service have circulated on gay-oriented Web sites, with Swaggart saying "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry."

"And I'm going to be blunt and plain: If one ever looks at me like that, I'm going to kill him and tell God he died," Swaggart says, to laughter and applause from the congregation.

A complaint was sent to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, a self-regulating industry group that enforces broadcast standards, after a Toronto television station broadcast the service, said Ann Mainville-Neeson, the group's executive director.

Expressing regret, Swaggart is quoted in The Times-Picayune on Tuesday saying the remark "was a tongue-in-cheek statement best left unsaid. I won't make it anymore." Swaggart explained he was talking figuratively about killing: "I've said it about other people, including other preachers." Swaggart also dismissed contentions from gay advocacy groups that such language encourages violence against gay men and lesbians.

"Good gracious alive, it would be a long stretch of the imagination to come up with that," he said.
Even so, he said: "I was unwise in making the statement. All of us have made statements we wish we hadn't made. That was one for me."

posted by jikido  # 10:10 AM