‘Feeling Very Betrayed’

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Rev. Mark Creech, director of the Christian Action League (CAL), says he is “absolutely brokenhearted” that his state’s senator, Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), is one of the legislators who voted for repeal.

“Senator Burr is someone with whom conservative evangelicals in North Carolina have had a great deal of confidence, and I can tell you that we are feeling very betrayed,” he shares. Listen to the audio report.

But something Creech deems even more shocking than Burr’s vote is the fact that two people on the governing board of his organization called the senator’s office prior to the vote and were told that Senator Burr was against repeal. That report proved contrary to the senator’s leanings, however, as he explained in his statement that he thought the policy was outdated. And as he noted a “generational transition” taking place on the issue, he decided that voting for repeal was the right thing to do.

But Creech argues that no such transition is taking place within the human body as it does not support homosexual behavior. “And I beg to strongly differ that the moral principle behind a policy that was unwilling to affirm open homosexual behavior and the negative consequences it will present was not an outdated policy,” he adds.

He calls the senator’s vote a “wholesale abandonment of chaplains and other religious persons in the military who consider a practice of their religious faith to be able to speak out against homosexuality as sinful behavior” because “this policy will undoubtedly place these people in a precarious position and force many of them out of our armed forces.”

And though the Christian pastor suggests that he and the people he represents will be able to forgive Senator Burr “on a personal level,” he is unsure they will be able to do so “on a political level.”

Creech says the only way Burr might redeem himself would be for him to lead with a bill in the next session to reinstate the ban “and then succeed at getting it passed.” Otherwise, he predicts conservative evangelicals in The Tar Heel State will be looking for someone else to support when Burr’s current term expires. Burr was elected to a second six-year term in November.