In February 2018, Guam’s KUAM News interviewed Wayman Mitchell during a faith-healing event at Ypao Beach and asked him directly whether he had a message for the island’s gay community. His answer, recorded here alongside his other Wayman Mitchell quotes about the island’s gay community, and the response it drew from the people it was aimed at, is the subject of this report.
Wayman Mitchell’s quotes about Guam’s gay community
Mitchell, whose Christian Fellowship Ministries network by then included Guam’s own Victory Chapel among more than 2,300 congregations in nearly a hundred countries, told the reporter that Jesus alone could show gay Guamanians a different way, describing them as unhappy and in need of the transformation he said he had witnessed in converts from every walk of life. He went further in a separate sermon posted online, using a derogatory slur for gay men while discussing earrings; the specific term is not reproduced here. Adrian Davis, a social work intern with Guam’s Gay and Lesbian Alliance, said he had heard the same word repeatedly since childhood, called it hurtful, and suggested education was the better response than repeating it.
A theology linking sin to physical ailments
Mitchell’s preaching, the report notes, extends specific sins to specific physical consequences in his own framework, claiming idol worship can cause eyesight problems and homosexuality can cause deafness. He defended the offense his preaching causes by pointing to the crucifixion itself, arguing that Christ was put to death precisely because he confronted sin, a framing that casts giving offense as itself a form of faithfulness rather than something to weigh against the harm it does.
GALA’s answer, in their own words
What distinguishes this report from a simple back-and-forth is the tone the people targeted by Mitchell’s remarks actually took. Adam Eustaquio of GALA said plainly that what people choose to believe is ultimately up to them, extending Mitchell a form of respect his own comments did not return. Davis noted that acceptance in Guam had grown over the years, including from his own father, while still worrying that comments like Mitchell’s could confuse people who were still working out their own understanding. Both men rejected the specific claim at the center of Mitchell’s message directly and without hedging. Davis said flatly that the community was not miserable and was, in fact, very happy, and Eustaquio closed the matter in his own words: “No, not at all. I’m actually very happy, thank you.”
Why these Wayman Mitchell quotes still matter
This report captures something worth naming plainly: a religious leader claiming a whole community was secretly miserable, and that same community answering him with more grace and more genuine tolerance than his own remarks extended to them. Whatever the theological merits of Mitchell’s position, the people he claimed to be describing were the ones actually equipped to say whether his description was accurate, and they said, on the record and by name, that it was not.
Sources and further reading
- KUAM News, “Religious leader: Guam’s gay community ‘miserable,’” February 2018
