#homophobichate

[ex-cogtfi]

TRIGGER WARNING: Very sensitive content.

It’s difficult to find the words to express how intensely disturbing the quotations in this final post are, but we believe we owe it to the public to expose the extent to which David Berg’s homophobic hate went.

Berg called for gays to be mass murdered.

Berg condemned societies and governments for failing to do so.

These were not isolated remarks.

These were multiple, reiterated rants spanning decades, recorded and transcribed by Karen Zerby, mass printed by the cult, and distributed to cult communes worldwide.

These are the words of the man whom the cult maintains a website in honor of. To this day, the cult has neither renounced Berg and Zerby’s homophobic hate, nor taken responsibility for the decades-long campaign of verbal violence they waged and the emotional harm and trauma they inflicted.

Behind the public image of The Family International today, there is this.

[ex-cogtfi]

After David Berg’s passing in 1994, Karen Zerby, the cult’s co-founder, assumed primary leadership of the cult. She continued many of Berg’s agendas (which she had played an active role in formulating and furthering throughout his leadership), including the aggressive spreading of homophobic hate. Like Berg, Zerby maliciously used the slur “sodomy,” claimed homosexuality disgusts and enrages God, and told members they should feel fury toward homosexuals.

Zerby urged members to avoid inclusive media, particularly movies in which gay characters were humanized or given positive qualities, for fear that such media would erode the hatred and prejudice that she and Berg had spent decades inoculating members young and old with.