“You know, very few people on Planet Earth, if Little Richard dials
somebody’s phone number, there’s nobody on Earth that wouldn’t answer it. 
I don’t care if it’s the President of the United States or the President of Africa.” 
– Danny Shelton on Three Angels Broadcasting Network.  The President of Africa???? 
He’s probably friends with the Emperor of Asia!

Here’s what I’ve learned lo these many decades in the gossip biz – many media outlets simply reprint a story that someone else reported.  They don’t go back to the source, they don’t do additional research – it’s just cut and paste.  So I was curious when I read headlines that Little Richard, the alleged architect of rock and roll, was publicly denouncing homosexuality.  Aside from the obvious, I wondered how someone who is 84 and hasn’t had a hit in several decades was making news.  And because I have standards, I watched every minute of his endless interview with the Three Angels Broadcasting Network – a network I don’t believe you’ll find on Spectrum or Comcast!

First things first – where’s the wig?  When I think of Little Richard, I picture him with a mop of hair on his head reminiscent of Miss Maxine Waters!  In this interview, he looks like OJ at the McDonald’s drive-thru!  Since 3ABN is a religious network, most of the chat focuses on Richard’s faith.  I had trouble focusing on anything other than his purple sequin pumps!  Little Richard says he’s turned down hundreds of thousands of dollars to do shows because it is impossible to serve two masters.  Personally, I’ve never found that particularly difficult.  Occasionally, I’ve served more than two – but that’s another story.  Of course, Ritchie also revealed that after his last show, his nephew said, “It’s time for you to stop – ’cause you sound awful”.  A far more believable scenario.

One of the quotes I keep reading is Little Richard condemned “unnatural affections”.  So, here’s the context – Richard was talking about the second coming of Jesus (and you haven’t lived until you’ve had someone named Jesus come twice!).  “All these things, so much unnatural affections.  So much of people just doing everything and don’t think about God and don’t want no parts of it.”  I don’t find that particularly pointed or inflammatory. 

The next alleged anti-gay comment was this quote:  “When I first come in show business, they wanted you to look like everybody but yourself.  And anybody that comes in show business, they gonna say are you gay, are you straight, are you a homosexual or something?  They’re gonna say it.  But the God Jesus made men men, he made women women.  And you gotta live the way God wants you to live.  But, see, he made you.  He loves all of us.  He loves whatever you are, he loves you.  I don’t care who you are, he loves you.”  Maybe I’m missing something, but that sounds to me like someone espousing an all-loving God.

Admittedly, it gets a bit sticky when Richard is asked about men wearing drag.  “A real man won’t wear no dress.  He won’t feel right with that type of attire on.  Not a real man.  I don’t think that’s acceptable to God.  The Lord tells us in the Bible that a man shouldn’t wear hers and a woman shouldn’t wear his.  It’s in the Bible.”  Is it?  Is it in the Bible?  ‘Cause I must have missed that part.  Perhaps it’s in the long-suppressed Book of RuPaul!

Richard ends by weighing in on public restrooms.  “I don’t think that a woman should go in a man’s bathroom.  And I don’t think a man should go in a woman’s bathroom…I don’t call nobody names because they go into a woman’s bathroom.  I don’t put no titles on nobody.  I don’t call nobody nothing.  I just say that when I was a boy, we had the respect not to go into the woman’s restroom and we had the respect not to go in the men’s bathroom.  That’s the way it was.   Things was like that.  Now it’s different.  People have their own thing in mind, their own setup.  I can’t tell nobody what to do, and I’m not telling nobody what to do.  And I love you all – I don’t care what you are, or where you’re from, or who you are or what color – I love you.  And God loves you too, and don’t you forget that.