Singer La’Porsha Renae has been a fan favorite among reality TV fans ever since she first stepped foot onto the “American Idol” stage and blew audiences away with her amazing voice. However, the beloved vocalist upset one of her biggest group of supporters, the LGBT community, this weekend when she commented that she doesn’t agree with the LGBT “lifestyle.”
According to media reports, Renae, who finished as a runner-up on the final season of “AI,” made the controversial comment in a recent interview when she was asked about her home state of Mississippi recently passing the infamous “Religious Liberty” bill 1523, which will allow businesses, individuals, and religiously affiliated organizations to deny service to LGBT people, as well as any other group, that manages to offend their “sincerely held religious belief.”
“This is how I feel about the LGBT community: They are people just like us. They’re not animals as someone stated before. They’re people with feelings. Although all of us may not agree with that particular lifestyle for religious reasons, whatever the reason is, you still treat each other with respect. Everybody is a human being. We should be able to coexist with one another,” Renae said.
She added, “I am one of the people who don’t really agree with that lifestyle. I wasn’t brought up that way. It wasn’t how I was raised. But I do have a lot of friends and a lot of people that I love dearly who are gay and homosexual and they’re such sweet, nice people. We should just respect each other’s differences and opinions and move on.”
Not surprisingly, LGBT fans across the Internet were outraged and proceeded to blast Renae online for her comments.
However, the singer decided to defend herself and say that she wants people to respect and love one another.
With the controversy still growing, Renae did a Periscope video yesterday and decided to apologize to her fans, saying that her words were “twisted up” in her initial interview.
“I tried to be as open and honest and neutral as possible, but that’s the way interviews go. Sometimes when you do interviews, it gets twisted up,” she later said. “I can understand when I read it back why people were offended, and for that I deeply apologize. I wasn’t trying to offend anyone. I was just trying to honestly answer a question that caught me off guard. It was supposed to be an interview about singing, and it became political and I’m not a political person at all.”
What do you think of Renae’s comments? Let us know in the comments section.
