Jim Bakker Claims Preachers Being Killed Over 'Don’t Say Gay' Support

Disgraced televangelist and convicted felon Jim Bakker said preachers are being killed in their pulpits over their support of Florida's "don't say gay" law. Bakker made the comments on a recent episode of his daily program, The Jim Bakker Show. The statements were first reported by Right Wing Watch.

"They call it 'don't say gay' and it's not true. It's not even in the law. It says nothing," Bakker said in the clip tweeted by Right Wing Watch.

"No. Don't get us started on all this, Jim," cohost and second wife Lori Bakker interrupted. "Yes, no."

"I'm asking the wisdom here of what to do," Bakker continued. "Because I get fought on every hand if I mention anything, and it's going to be preachers that we're not going to be able to preach much longer, because they'll shoot us in the pulpit. They will kill us in our pulpits. You don't believe me? They're already doing it."

Bakker and his ex-wife, Tammy Faye Bakker, rose to fame as cohosts The PTL Club during the 1970s and '80s. His televangelist empire came crashing down following an extramarital affair in 1987.

He later served time in prison for defrauding his church followers. More recently he was accused of peddling a fraudulent cure for the most recent pandemic on his TV show, which was later settled.

Bakker is a proponent of prosperity gospel, a belief popular among televangelists which rationalizes materialism and the accumulation of earthly wealth as God's reward for a believer's faith.

Tammy Faye Bakker divorced her husband in 1992 and became a popular and sympathetic figure in the LGBTQ+ community following the 2000 documentary The Eyes of Tammy Faye by gay filmmakers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. She passed away in 2007 at the age of 65. Jim Bakker married his second wife, Lori Beth Graham, in 1998.