In a new interview with "The Chuck Shute Podcast", KING'S X frontman Doug "Dug" Pinnick talked about his years in the metal Christian closet and the relief he felt after making a clean break with religion. "Being told that if you're gay, it's an abomination, and God hates that more than anything else other than blasphemy of the Holy Spirit," he said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET. "According to the Bible, a man shall not lay down with another man; it is an abomination. So I'm told that all my life and I'm gay. So I wouldn't tell anybody. One time I decided, 'Well, I'm gonna do like Jesus did: I'm gonna go fast for three days and ask God to change me.' And I went and sat in a trailer out in the country and fasted and didn't eat and just drank water for two days. And I prayed and prayed and cried and begged God to change me, and I didn't feel a thing. And I stopped and I went, 'I give up.' And all I could think of in the back of my mind is the scriptures that people say, 'Don't give up on God' and 'God's not done with you' and 'You have to wait on God' and 'You can't get things in God's timing.' So anything that I would do that didn't work was my fault. "See, religion for me was nothing but oppressive," he continued. "They wouldn't let me do anything. I remember sitting in church with my great grandmother at four or five years old, in the front row, hearing the pastor screaming and yelling about if you dance, you drink, you smoke cigarettes, you're going to hell, the demons are gonna get you. I went to bed every night scared to death, as a child, thinking that the devil was gonna come and bother me. I used to have nightmares all the time, wake up screaming. "For me, religion was abusive," Pinnick added. "And other people, it's not like that, and I'm fine with that. But for me, it is. And when someone comes to tell me that, 'Oh, God loves you and He died for your sins,' in my mind I just wanna say, 'Go fuck yourself.' But instead I just have to be like I want everybody else to be — accept the person for who they are and what they believe and love 'em, because it doesn't matter. Love covers a multitude of sins — even the Bible says that. Well, somebody said that it came from the Bible. I'm not sure, so don't quote me." The biracial 71-year-old went on to blast hypocrisy-, money-, and popularity-minded Christians who crave adulation, alienating unbelievers with their pride and greed. "I believe there are many, many, many, many true believers who I admire and applaud," Pinnick said, "but I do believe that there's many, many, many, many who are just evil people who are only out for their own personal gain — evil narcissist people who are using religion for… I mean, when a guy says, 'Give me your money, 'cause God wants me to have an airplane.' You've got [Jimmy Swaggart] and all those people asking for your money, they're just bullshit; they're just liars. They are a bunch of narcissists who have found a way to bleed people dry. I have such a disgust for them. And I have a sadness for people who believed it, and still believe it. I have a sadness for 'em — not a distaste; I have a sadness. And I have to stay away because I'm that type of person they will not accept. And it's sad to me. But that's life." Pinnick, who kept his homosexuality quiet with all but his closest friends, eventually came out in a 1998 interview in Contemporary Christian Music magazine. "It was a big mess," he told LA Weekly in 2002. "Our records got banned from the Christian bookstores; I got hate mall. But they had put me on a pedestal and just expected so much out of me, and I just finally couldn't do it anymore. I hated myself. I had a big panic attack and thought about killing myself. Then I thought, I can't do that. I'm too chicken. It was time, and I decided that if I was going to come out, I was going to come out to my 'family.'" KING'S X recently completed work on its first studio album in 14 years. 2008's "XV" was KING'S X's highest-charting album since 1996's "Ear Candy". KING'S X was sidelined by several health scares in recent years, including Pinnick's two hernia operations and two near-fatal heart attacks suffered by drummer Jerry Gaskill. In October 2019, KING'S X canceled all of its previously announced tour dates for the year so that Gaskill could undergo undisclosed heart "procedures." In 2005, VH1 included KING'S X in its list of "100 Greatest Artists In Hard Rock."
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