Little Richard recently gave a rare interview for Three Angels Broadcasting Network, an Illinois-based Christian and health-oriented television and radio network.
During the interview, Richard touched on homosexuality, disavowing same-sex relationships as “unnatural affections.”
“When I first come in show business they wanted you to look like everybody but yourself,” he said. “And, anybody that comes in show business they gone say you gay or straight…God made men, men and women, women. You’ve got to live the way God wants you to live…he can save you.”
Richard’s statement is completely different from quotes shared in a 2012 GQ article, in which friends remember the singer as “leading a naked man around a dressing room by a penis” and throwing orgies.
In the same article, the singer also claimed to be “omnisexual.” “We are all both male and female. Sex to me is like a smorgasbord. Whatever I feel like, I go for. What kind of sexual am I? I am omnisexual!”
And, in Charles White’s The Life And Times Of Little Richard, the singer claims that his marriage to Ernestine Campbell fell apart due to his sexuality and being neglectful.
“You know, all these things. So much unnatural affection,” Richard added during the new interview. “So much of people just doing everything and don’t think about God. Don’t want no parts of him.”
“Regardless of whatever you are, he loves you. I don’t care what you are. He loves you and he can save you. All you’ve got to do is say, ‘Lord, take me as I am. I’m a sinner.’ But we all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. The only holy, righteous person is Jesus and he wants us to be just like him because, in order to go to Heaven, we’ve got to look like him,” Richard said. “I don’t want to sing rock and roll no more. … I want to be holy like Jesus.”