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In the sermon, delivered June 2, the pastor, Grayson Fritts, also called for the government to send a riot team to a Pride parade scheduled for June 22 in Knoxville. He said LGBT people should be arrested, tried, and if convicted, executed.
“That’s the problem with law enforcement nowadays,” he said in a video of the sermon posted by The Tennessee Holler. “They are chasing around cookie thieves, when the real animals are on floats rolling down Gay Street.”
Fritts is a pastor at All Scripture Baptist Church, which makes its stance on homosexuality known on its website: “A person will only burn in their lust toward the same gender if they have been given over to a reprobate or rejected mind. God said homosexuality should be punished with the death penalty, as set forth in Leviticus 20:13. No homosexual will be allowed to attend or join All Scripture Baptist Church.”
Fritts is also a detective at the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. His sermon prompted the Knox County district attorney’s office to examine cases Fritts had worked on as a detective.
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“When any potential witness in a criminal proceeding expresses an opinion of hatred and or bias toward a class of citizens, I am ethically bound to explore that witness’ credibility,” the district attorney, Charme P. Allen, said in a statement. “Accordingly, I am reviewing all pending cases involving Mr. Fritts to scrutinize them for any potential bias.”
It was not immediately clear how many cases would be reviewed. Allen could not be reached for comment Saturday.
She also assigned an assistant district attorney to take complaints about closed cases that Fritts may have worked on, the statement said. Allen said that while her office had never received a complaint about Fritts before, it was important to act on complaints “as justice dictates.”
Fritts could not be reached for comment Saturday, but in another video posted Thursday by The Tennessee Holler, he responded to criticism about his earlier sermon, saying he had not called for violence against LGBT people.
“I am not an anomaly,” Fritts said in the video. “I am a Baptist preacher that is just preaching the Bible, and if it offends society, then it is just going to offend society.”
The Knox County mayor, Glenn Jacobs, called Fritts’ earlier sermon “outrageous.”
“I think they’re vile and reprehensible,” he said Saturday of the comments. “I condemn any sort of comment like that, that calls for violence.”
He said Fritts had sought an early retirement from his detective position before his sermon had drawn widespread attention, and that he was not currently active with the Sheriff’s Office. Representatives from the office did not respond to emails and phone calls Saturday. But according to The Knoxville News Sentinel, Knox County Sheriff Tom Spangler said in a statement Wednesday that he had agreed to a request Fritts had made for a county buyout from his position.
The mayor of Knoxville, Madeline Rogero, said that the city would host its Pride parade and that she would attend, along with members of other churches.
Referring to Fritts’ comments, she said: “That is not what Knoxville or Knox County is about. That is an aberration. What that particular pastor said is not reflective of our community and the way we treat ourselves and the way we treat our citizens. We want the world to know that that is not how we are and that is not how we behave.”