MICHIGAN
The Raw Story
JOAN SHIPPS
21 MAY 2015
A Michigan mother says Matthew Makela — former pastor at St. John’s Lutheran Church and School in Midland — told her son he would go to hell for being gay. Ashamed of his sexuality and fearful of eternal damnation, the then 17-year-old child came to suffer from depression and thoughts of suicide, WNEM reports.
Makela stepped down from his post at St. John’s earlier this week after Queerty provided photographic evidence of the married father of five — who was prone to saying hateful things about gay people online — seeking out male companionship on the popular hookup app, Grindr.
Jennifer Kish tells WNEM reporters that Makela “nearly drove [her son] to suicide.”
In an interview with the Saginaw-based news outlet, Kish says she “moved to Midland specifically to go to this church,” referring to St. John’s. But then Pastor Makela began harassing her son online.
Using social media, Makela warned the teenage boy of homosexuality-induced hell fire in the afterlife, putting the child in a hopeless mindset. “If he’s going to hell for being gay,” Kish describes her son’s state of mind with tears in her eyes, “then he might as well commit suicide.”
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