A Tennessee street preacher is challenging an Oklahoma court order threatening him with arrest and potential prison time if, over the next five years, he posts Bible verses condemning homosexuality on social media.
Rich Penkoski is the leader of Warriors for Christ, an organization of street preachers that, among other things, attempts to combat the LGBTQ agenda. Its home page, for example, displays a map of the United States indicating “all establishments that have had events that target children for grooming.” One of those establishments is, of all things, a church in Oklahoma, and taking note of it is what has Penkoski in hot water.
According to a press release from the Rutherford Institute, which is appealing the court order on Penkoski’s behalf, last year,
Penkoski used social media to express his moral and religious concerns about a church that endorses same-sex marriage and a public drag queen performance in front of children. In one of Penkoski’s posts, he shared the church’s public photo of a same-sex wedding involving leaders of an LGBTQ organization and quoted Bible verses describing God’s judgment of sin. In a second post, Penkoski criticized the church’s publicly shared photos of children celebrating Pride Month. In a third post, Penkoski weighed in on a regional effort to ban adult-oriented entertainment in public spaces. Attempting to refute what he believed were false statements by one of the leaders of the LGBTQ group who told city council that no adult-oriented entertainment, obscenity, or sexually suggestive performances had occurred at a Pride event, Penkoski posted a video clip of the LGBTQ leader’s public statement to city council along with a video and photos of a drag queen behaving in a sexually suggestive manner near children at the Pride event.
Needless to say, this did not go over well with the LGBTQ activists, who believe they have the right to do as they please without being criticized. They petitioned a Washington County, Oklahoma, court for a restraining order against Penkoski — and succeeded.
“Although there was no evidence that Penkoski ever contacted, spoke to, tagged, or met the public figures leading the LGBTQ group, the trial court — based upon claims that the LGBTQ leaders felt terrorized and harassed by Penkoski’s three social media posts on religious and political issues — imposed a five-year protective order against him,” wrote the Rutherford Institute. That order requires Penkoski to refrain from any conduct that might cause the LGBTQ leaders to fear for their safety, which presumably includes citing Bible verses they don’t like. Failure to comply could result in Penkoski’s arrest and jailing for up to one year.
“Religious individuals have a clear First Amendment right to publicly cite Bible verses that reflect their concerns about moral issues of the day without being accused of stalking, harassing or terrorizing those who are offended by the sentiments,” said Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead. “This case is a foreshadowing of the government’s efforts to insulate the populace from all things that might cause offense by criminalizing nonviolent First Amendment activities (speech, thought and actions) perceived as politically incorrect.”
This isn’t Penkoski’s first run-in with the LGBTQ crowd. Last summer, his YouTube channel, which had 526,000 subscribers, and Facebook page were temporarily shut down thanks to complaints from an online “stalker,” he told MyChristianDaily.
It isn’t hard to figure out why they hate him. He and his fellow preachers show up at “pride” events and drag queen story hours and not only preach to those in attendance but also livestream the event so the public can see what’s really happening, not the sanitized version presented by the mainstream media. Penkoski claims to have exposed some drag queens as sex offenders and to have “shut down 21 events [as of last July] where drag queens were targeting children.” He also says his livestreams have resulted in the conversion of “dozens of homosexuals” as well as a former Antifa activist and a couple who were addicted to drugs.
To make sure he — and anyone else who might quote the Bible in a way that offends someone — can continue to preach without fear of arrest, Penkoski is asking the Oklahoma Supreme Court to overturn the lower court’s restraining order against him.
