A 2017 VLAD TV interview featuring "Brand Nubian" rapper Lord Jamar is making the rounds again on social media for anti-gay comments directed at the late Little Richard who passed away on May 9 from bone cancer.
The flamboyant singer who battled with being gay internally for the majority of his life, and openly denounced homosexuality in the last decade that he was alive—provided fodder for Jamar's anti-gay rant.
"He realized he was bugging," said Lamar of Richard's denouncement of his sexual orientation.
"Good! It's never too late to come to your fucking senses. It's never too late to become straight."
Richard wasn't the only Black man with a target on his back for Jamar's anti-gay rhetoric. He saved some for former President Barack Obama and his endorsement to end conversion therapy in the United States.
"Your man Obama tried to outlaw, and I think he did—conversion therapy. As if there's something wrong with that...trying to correct something that needs correction," said Jamar.
"Why would you outlaw it? Why would you outlaw somebody from trying to do it? That's ridiculous. Just you trying to talk somebody out of their homosexuality...doesn't matter the methods—they feel that in itself is bad, and that's some bullshit," he added.
Conversion therapy, which in the past has included shock therapy in an effort to desensitize and change an individual's same -sex attraction has been proven to be harmful, with The American Psychiatric Association and The Pan American Health Organization, a regional office of the World Health Organization, concluding that conversion therapy, “lack[s] medical justification and represent[s] a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people.”
The American Psychiatric Association released this statement on conversion therapy in 2018: The American Psychiatric Association does not believe that same-sex orientation should or needs to be changed, and efforts to do so represent a significant risk of harm by subjecting individuals to forms of treatment which have not been scientifically validated and by undermining self-esteem when sexual orientation fails to change. No credible evidence exists that any mental health intervention can reliably and safely change sexual orientation; nor, from a mental health perspective does sexual orientation need to be changed.”
To date, only 19 states have banned conversion therapy in the United States.
You can watch Lord Jamar in all of his homophobic glory in the clip below, if you can stomach it.