Christian Homeless Shelter Evicts All Women Just Before Christmas, Bans Most Children
It doesn’t seem very Christ-like, but a Christian homeless shelter in Williamsburg, Kentucky has just taken the rash and uncharitable step of kicking out all female residents. Emergency Christian Ministries, the only homeless shelter in the city, has decided to evict the women currently living at the facility and ban further women from seeking shelter under its roof. The reason for the pre-Christmas removal of the shelter’s ladies? Sex, reports WYMT. The director of the Christian homeless shelter, Billy Woodward said that people are having sex at the shelter, and that behavior can’t be tolerated.
“It seems like these last days it’s getting worse… the ungodly type.”
The director of the Christian homeless shelter said that because the facility houses more men than women, it only makes sense to remove the women from the shelter. Over the last two weeks alone, around a dozen women were asked to leave. Those who were willing to be sheltered a half-hour away were relocated to a women’s-only shelter in Gray, Kentucky.
The director of the Christian homeless shelter went on to add that the facility wouldn’t ban all children from the only homeless shelter in the city. Woodward did concede that he would accept a homeless father and his male child, if need be.
When Woodward was asked how he’d come to his decision to remove current female residents from his Christian homeless shelter and ban additional women from seeking shelter just weeks before Christmas, he responded that his decision to evict females was “based on the Bible.” He went on to explain that the “sex problem” at the Christian homeless shelter was sinful.
He added that he wasn’t blaming women for the sex problem, but that it takes two. He clarified that the Christian homeless shelter is not “biased or prejudice whatsoever.” Because men make up the majority of the homeless shelter’s residents, the decision was made to evict them. Woodward told the media that last year, 38 percent of the facility’s residents were women.
Not surprisingly, not everyone is impressed with the decision of the only homeless shelter in town to kick out and ban all women and most children, let alone during the holiday season.
“I guess I’m a little old school, but the first people off the boat were the women and children.”
While the director of the Christian homeless shelter stands by his claims that women were evicted because of a sinful sex problem, Addicting Info reports that he produced absolutely no evidence to substantiate his claims. They also reported that the facility previously had separate dorms for males and females, despite this Woodward is now claiming that the shelter would require renovations in order to begin accepting homeless women and their children again in the future. Woodward also inferred that he might have turned a blind eye to the sexual shenanigans if they’d been more discreet.
“I don’t know if what’s happening, uh, if it’s a whole because they know it’s a men and women’s shelter, they say, ‘well, we’re homeless — maybe we can find somebody, a mate or something. If they done it right, they’d be fine but they go overboard with it.”
This statement comes despite the director’s official claim that the women were ousted purely for the sinful nature of their behavior rather than how blatant he found it to be.
Social media users largely responded to the ban on homeless women with questions, incredulity and disgust.
It started with Mexicans, then Blacks, Gays, Muslims now Women….If this is what Christianity represents, it… https://t.co/k2jPQneJaO
— Petra Carlisle (@ladyarmysgt) December 13, 2015
This is not the first time that Kentucky has been embroiled in scandal due to someone’s personal interpretation of the Bible spilling over onto others. This summer, Rowan County clerk Kim Davis made international headlines when she refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses in accordance with a Supreme Court ruling. Her reason? Her religious beliefs.
There has been no word from the shelter’s director regarding why he simply didn’t evict individuals who were caught having sex on a case-by-case basis, regardless of their gender.
It remains to be seen where the homeless women of Williamsburg will find shelter locally now that this Christian homeless shelter, the only one in town, has signed their eviction notices.
[Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
