This election cycle has seen an uptick in misogynistic language from the Trump-Vance ticket and its followers. But at a recent sermon, Texas Christian nationalist Pastor Joel Webbon, who has ties to Trump, took the sexist rhetoric to a new level and said that women who falsely accuse a man of sexual abuse or misconduct should be executed.
Webbon, an associate of former Trump administration Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense William Wolfe, founded Right Response Ministries and preaches at Covenant Bible Church, an independent Christian nationalist church based in Austin, TX, according to Right Wing Watch, a People For online publication.
Webbon belongs to a subset of Christianity that advocates for the United States to become a Christian theocracy, which would include banning abortion and no-fault divorce, supporting legislation recognizing Jesus as Lord and Savior, and adding the Apostles’ Creed as an official part of the United States Constitution, to name just a few tenets of Webbon’s extreme and highly dangerous beliefs.
“#MeToo would end real fast”
People For first posted the Webbon footage from an October sermon, and since then, the clip has been shared widely on TikTok and elsewhere on the internet. In it, he mentions that in ancient Israel, the punishment for “bearing false witness” would be the same as that for the crime for which someone was falsely accused, or an “eye-for-an-eye” approach, which is how Webbon and others who think as he does believe laws should work today.
So, in other words, falsely accuse someone of murder, and you could lose your life. As far as a woman knowingly accusing a man of sexual assault or misconduct when he didn’t do it, they should also be executed, Webbon said. Here’s Webbon’s quote in part, ” … #MeToo would end real fast. False accusing, playing the victim when you’re actually not; you know how to end that real fast? All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied.”
Webbon seems not to realize that a death sentence for lying about sexual assault or misconduct isn’t an exact eye-for-an-eye, but that’s beside the point. Moreover, data on how often sexual assault reports are fake varies, but recent studies have shown the rate is somewhere between 2 and 8%. Meanwhile the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) says 63% of sexual assaults are never reported, and it doesn’t just happen to women: According to NSVRC, one in 71 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes.
“Ya’llqueda, you need to knock it off”
Menamatkeshottakes shared the shocking Webbon footage, adding, “We are going the wrong way as a country. Y’allqueda, you need to knock it off.” Her comments agreed. “[S]eriously, American men allowing for this kinda scum say it in public should be ashamed of themselves.” In case you’re wondering, filing a false police report is already a crime in most places, and depending on the jurisdiction, typical punishments range from fines to jail time.
But Webbon’s deranged take on justice is not the rambling of some isolated right-wing extremist. Like most places, it’s already illegal in Oklahoma to knowingly accuse someone of a crime when they didn’t do it. But in February, Oklahoma state Oklahoma Senator Dusty Deevers introduced legislation that would more or less make what Webbon said a reality. “The penalty for such misdemeanor or felony shall be the same as the provisions for such offense of the accused crime in the false report,” the law stated.
Explaining the law, Deever added, “Essentially, if you are a malicious witness [and] you knowingly, willingly lie about someone and charge them with something, then whatever the punishment they would have received, you’re going to receive,” Deevers said. “We get that from numerous places in [biblical] law.”