Gaylard Williams
Gaylard Williams, 59, pastor of Praise Cathedral Church of God in Seymour, Ind. known for his anti-gay sermons, was arrested recently and charged with sexual battery for allegedly groping a young man in park there.
The victim, 27, told police he was sitting in his vehicle near Cypress Lake on Friday, Dec. 12 when Williams approached his car. The younger man told police he rolled down his window to see what Williams wanted, and Williams reached in the windown, grabbed his genitals and squeezed, while at the same time asking the young man to perform oral sex on him, according to WLKY.com.
According to reports by The Daily Beast, Williams kept trying to convince the young man to give him a blow job, even though the young man told him repeatedly that he “didn’t swing that way.” Williams suggested that the lake was a known cruise area and that he had come there before to find men for sex, and that the younger man wouldn’t be parked there if he weren’t looking for sex.
The younger man told police he finally got Williams to leave by telling him he had a gun and pretending to reach for a weapon. When Williams got in his car to leave, the younger man followed him long enough to write down his license plate number and report him to police.
WLKY reports that when police caught Williams, they found gay pornography in his car. He allegedly told police the videotape was “a promotional thing” that came in the mail to his office, and that he was just delivering it to a friend.
Williams was released on his own recognizance and is expected back before a judge on Feb. 9.
Williams has told his congregation that anyone who engages in same-sex sex is a wicked person and going to hell. And his church’s website includes a statement of “moral purity” calling on church members to “engage in those activities which glorify God in our body and which avoid the fulfillment of the lust of the flesh. We will read, watch and listen to those things which are of positive benefit to our spiritual well-being.”
