Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Shares CNN Report of Pastor Calling to Ban Gay Sex and Ban Women From Voting

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is in hot water for his reposting of a CNN segment on social media of his church’s pastor, Doug Wilson, supporting international Christian governance and U.S. laws criminalizing homosexuality, criminalizing gay sex, and banning women from voting.

Secretary Hegeseth reposted the segment on August 7 in which Wilson and other pastors representing Secretary Hegeseth’s church Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) stated controversial views such as making consensual gay sex illegal, preventing women from holding positions that have “authority over men,” and women serving in the military.

In the CNN interview, Doug Wilson explains how his church in Moscow, Idaho, the CREC flagship location, is growing in numbers and popularity with his ideology gaining influence in the Trump Administration.

The publication, The Advocate, says Hegseth has endorsed Wilson’s views that he does not believe women should be allowed to serve in the military, stating in a November segment that “men and women are different.”

Wilson also has inflammatory views on race, as reported by Them when asked by a CNN reporter, whether he still believed that slavery promoted “affection between the races” in the U.S., Wilson said he does. “It depends on which master and which slave you’re talking about. Slavery was overseen and conducted by fallen human beings, and there were horrendous abuses, and there were also people who owned slaves who were decent human beings and didn’t mistreat them,” says Wilson.

Them says Wilson’s beliefs, “is grossly ahistorical and a common talking point in modern Confederate apologia.” The publication reports that Wilson has described himself as a “paleo-Confederate” as well as a “genuine” Christian nationalist.