Gay rights campaigners meet the Baptists

Politics makes strange bedfellows. Conventions make bedfellows that cause the bedfellows to run screaming away from each other.

A Tuesday scene in Charlotte: campaigners for the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights lobby group, on one street corner; on the street corner diagonal from them, fire-and-brimstone preachers from the New Testament Independent Baptist Church in Kannapolis, North Carolina, a small city about 45 minutes away.

Church member Bobby Utley, 75, said they usually do street preaching every other Saturday. They came to the convention site simply because they knew there would be big crowds.

"April the 3rd of 1962," Utley said, "I was a hell-bound drunk, goin' to hell without God, and I walked into church, and the Lord, Jesus Christ, saved me, cleaned up my life. And for 45 years, I've walked with trust in Jesus Christ, lookin' for his soon comin'. Jesus is comin' soon."

A sample of the preaching:

 

Another: