Boxing legend Manny Pacquiao is backtracking after claiming that “it’s just common sense” that homosexuality is a sin against nature, after having earlier asked whether anyone has ever “seen any animal having male-to-male or female-to-female relations?”
He initially claimed that animals were superior to people — or members of the LGBTQ community, at least — because “if you have male-to-male or female-to-female [relations] then [you] are worse than animals.”
Many in the LGBTQ community both in the Philippines and abroad were critical of his statement, including popular television host Jose Marie Viceral:
The LGBT is a group of people. We are humans. But not animals. Though we're no saints we will pray for Manny Pacquiao.
— jose marie viceral (@vicegandako) February 16, 2016
On Facebook, Pacquio claimed that he’s merely “obey[ing] the Lord’s command rather than obeying the desires of the flesh. I[‘]m not condemning anyone, but I’m just telling the truth of what the Bible says.”
In a video he later posted, however, he insisted that he was “sorry for hurting people by comparing homosexuals to animals” and asked God to “forgive me for those I’ve hurt.”
Read Pacquiao’s statement on Facebook here.