Tennessee far-right pastor fears 'gay beam' airport scanner will make him queer

A Christian nationalist pastor in Tennessee revealed that he refuses to pass through "gay beam" airport scanners because he fears they will make him gay.

Pastor Andrew Isker, who appears not to realize his bear status within the LGBTQ+ community, made the claim on a recent episode of the Contra Mundum podcast he cohosts with fellow Christian nationalist C. Jay Engel. A clip of the podcast was posted to social media by investigative journalist Phil Williams.

“Where was the Constitution when the Patriot Act was passed?" Isker says in the podcast. “Right? Give me a break. Like, I had to be molested at the airport to go to Florida, right, just to get on an airplane, just because I’m not going to go through the ‘gay beam’ machine. I didn't let C. Jay do it. I wouldn't let him do it. I said, 'You're getting patted down, too, buddy. I don't want them turning you gay.'

But Isker was not finished.

“It appears having a guy touch you all over the place, is on its face, seems worse, but you don't really know what’s going, what those things are doing to you," Isker continues after he was momentarily rendered speechless by his own words.

“Or where the imaging goes or what they’re, what they’re doing in the back room,” Engels adds.

“Yeah, they can just take a picture of me naked?” Isker concludes. “Like, no.”

“A virtual adrenochrome system back there?” Engels asks, referring to a right-wing conspiracy theory that claims leftist celebrities and politicians torture children to produce a chemical compound that is subsequently taken from the murdered children to prolong their own lives.

“Yeah, maybe,” Isker agrees.

Isker, the author of The Boniface Option: A Strategy For Christian Counteroffensive in a Post-Christian Nation, is part of an effort to create a Christian nationalist community in eastern Tennessee. The proposed community and the views they hold were too much for the Appalachian area. Citizens strongly expressed their opposition to the plans at a town hall meeting last November, local CBS affiliate WTVF reports.

“They’re a wolf in sheep's clothing,” an unidentified woman called out during the meeting.

“This town is not for them,” Barry Naff, a local business owner, agreed.