From a young age food has controlled me…When I was at school and wasn’t having a great time or when music wasn’t going very well, I would eat, eat. Eating would make me feel better. When I felt lonely, I would eat. If someone called me fat, that affects me way more than someone calling me a faggot. I think just because I’ve accepted that, if someone calls me a faggot, it’s like, I am gay and I’m proud to be gay so there’s no issues there. But if someone calls you fat, that’s something I want to change.”

Image from Twitter

With just over four weeks to go until Ireland’s marriage equality referendum, the “no” campaigners are taking a leaf from American anti-gay activists like Scott Lively in their attempts to sway voters.

Following a failed attempt last week by a small number of religious leaders to add a “conscience clause” to the referendum, Pastor Craig Ledbetter of the Bible Baptist Church in Cork has compared homosexuality with rape and adultery.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner, Ledbetter argued that a same-sex sexual relationship can never be consensual:

“Homosexuality is wrong, just like rape and just like adultery.

“We are dealing with one party believing he is right in what he is doing, so it is not really consensual. Two people can consent to adultery or consent to rob a bank, but that doesn’t make either of those things right.

“If they want a sexual relationship they can get the blessing of the State but that should not amount to re- defining marriage which is exclusively the preserve of a man and a woman.”

Recognizing that his bizarre opinions could convince many people to vote in favor of the referendum, he also complained that there has been no serious discussion on same-sex marriage in the Irish media apart from “a few fake TV debates.”

Ledbetter has since claimed that he was misquoted.

Strange how people quote me about same sex marriage but have no idea what I actually said. Rape is sexual sin as is adultery & homosexuality

— Craig Ledbetter (@craigledbetter) April 18, 2015

Last week, Christian activists including Iona Institute mouthpiece Breda O’Brien (right) attacked former Irish President Mary McAleese for comments in support of same-sex marriage. Yesterday, O’Brien said that gay people and unmarried heterosexuals should abstain from sex in order to live a Christian life. A petition to revoke the Iona Institute’s charitable status is less than 2,000 signatures short of the required 15,000.

A March Irish Times poll found that 74 percent of the electorate intend to vote in favor of same-sex marriage.

Watch the Iona Institute’s The Case For Man/Woman Marriage video and a parody detailing “the right kind of discrimination,” AFTER THE JUMP…

A Maryland man was sentenced to 150 years in prison on Wednesday after he was found guilty earlier this year on 11 counts of second- and third-degree sexual offenses reports the AP. Prosecutors say 40-year-old Joey Poindexter, dubbed the “Beer Pong Rapist,” who met his victims in beer pong tournaments and bars, was convicted of assaulting five men, but prosecutors believe there are at least two dozen more unidentified victims after police found that Poindexter recorded and took dozens of photos on his phone of himself assaulting several unconscious, incoherent men; prosecutors believe that Poindexter assaulted an additional 30 men. Ramon Korionoff of the Montgomery County State Attorney’s Office stated the series of rapes began in 2011 and expressed disgust with Poindexter’s actions.

Said Korionoff:

“Completely heinous and terrible sexual assaults. He did this knowing full well that he was taking advantage of people that were intoxicated.”

Other reports state that the series of assaults may have occurred over the span of the last 10 years. Surveillance video from one bar in College Park, Md. shows Poindexter, a property appraiser, buying a Long Island Iced Tea for one of his victims, which the victim consumed, with Poindexter escorting the drugged victim outside. The victim awoke the next morning in Poindexter’s home to find himself wearing a pair of Poindexter’s shorts and found his clothes in a pile next to him on the floor. The victim, who had no memory of the previous evening, approached police with the suspicion that he was sexually assaulted. The victim questioned Poindexter, while wearing a police wire, about the night’s events with Poindexter responding, “If it makes you feel any better, I don’t have any (expletive) AIDS, if anything did happen.”

Additional victims later came forward after investigators issued a public appeal for the case; some victims had no inclination they had even been assaulted until they were shown photo and video evidence. Poindexter’s lawyer says her client intends on appealing the 150-year sentence.

Watch CBS Baltimore’s coverage of the sentencing, including a statement from Poindexter’s lawyer, AFTER THE JUMP...