Praying about abortion and traditional marriage didn’t sit well with Democrat members of the Virginia House of Delegates this week. Democrats, who won control of the legislature last November, walked off the floor after a pastor delivered an invocation urging them to protect the unborn and to uphold biblical, traditional marriage.
The six-minute prayer by Robert M. Grant Jr. of The Father’s Way Church in Warrenton, Va., eventually was cut off by House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn, a Democrat, who gaveled the prayer to a close and began citing the Pledge of Allegiance.
Watch the prayer:
“I pray that you may understand that all life is precious and worthy of a chance to be born, and God is a giver of life and people have no right or authority to take life,” Grant prayed. “The unborn has rights, and those rights need to be protected. They should never be denied the right to exist, the right to develop or the right to have a family. The word of God has given us a warning – woe to anyone who harms an innocent child. Every one of you sitting here today can guarantee these rights to these little innocent children of Virginia. Please do not ignore their little voices. I pray for a heart change today.”
Grant further prayed that the chamber would uphold the “biblical, traditional marriage as God instructed the first man and the first woman in the Bible, that the two shall be one flesh, that a man and a woman shall be fruitful and multiply. We should never rewrite what God has declared.”
Grant, who is black, also touched on prison reform and questioned why “there so many abortion clinics near African American communities. This is planned urban genocide – and you can change this,” he said.
Delegate Michael Webert, a Republican, invited Grant to pray.
“I think that the statehouse belongs to all the citizens and all the citizens have a voice,” Grant told reporters after the prayer/ “If it’s my turn to have a voice, and I am a pastor, what do you expect from me? If you don’t want to hear what a pastor has to say, then don’t invite one.”
Virginia Democrats won control of the state legislature in November 2019 and have passed legislation normally associated with very liberal states like New York and California. Political analysts say they’re at risk of losing control after they announced plans this year to confiscate guns from legal gun owners.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice