Dr Gary Cass of the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission has defended a church that performed a gruelling exorcism on a 16-year-old boy.

Manifested Glory Church in Bridgeport, CT, has been widely condemned after a video was released showing the boy writhing around on the floor as a preacher attempted to rid him of the demon supposedly behind his homosexuality. As others held the teenager in place, occasionally propping him up, the preacher shouted, “You homosexual spirit, we call you out right now. You have no power. … Loose your grip, Lucifer, you sex demon,” among other commands to the Devil.

Now Dr Cass has decried critics, accusing them of intolerance:

Where is the tolerance for a church who tried to help a young man who freely asked for help to overcome homosexual temptations? … No church deserves to be maligned for trying to help a troubled teen who asked for prayer.

He insinuates (helped by Christian Newswire’s headline, which unnecessarily identifies Manifested Glory as a black church) that racism is behind the criticisms:

White homosexual activists who demand tolerance for their sexual sin have no right to defame black Christians for practicing their Constitutional religious liberty. … As far as we know, this young man went to church on his own prerogative and left the church physically unharmed.

This kind of demonic deliverance is in fact found in Pentecostal and charismatic churches regardless of ethnicity, which leaves Dr Cass’s accusation baseless.

The real concern here is that a 16-year-old – white, black or anywhere in-between – was subjected to such an intense ordeal. And if he did consent to being treated in this way, to what kind of abusive teaching must he have been exposed to get to the point where he was convinced his sexual orientation was the result of possession by Satan?

Watch the video below:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhedHERfcXk[/youtube]