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Former CNN host Don Lemon suggested that Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, was a “sort of gay guy” who smuggled her to Bethlehem to avoid persecution for being pregnant and unmarried.

Lemon made the comments on a recent episode of the Micahel Steele Podcast, in which he cast the Biblical Nativity Story as a gay man’s attempt to save himself and the pregnant Virgin Mary from rigid, fundamentalist persecution.

“Should I tell them what I said?” Lemon asked Steele.

“Yeah, go ahead,” Steele responded while smiling and laughing.

“I said, well, maybe Joseph was this sort of gay guy who said…” Lemon’s voice trailed into laughter as Steele told listeners to pick themselves “off the floor.”

Lemon continued, “…right, I [speaking as Joseph] I don’t want her to die or be stoned to death, or whatever because she got pregnant and she’s not married…and then I am not married, or whatever. So, okay, this is kind of perfect.”

Steele interjected, “Because he was an older gentleman, unmarried gentleman.”

“Yes, and so it’s kind of perfect,” Lemon responded. “And so he took her out of her town and took her to Bethlehem.”

“And he got out of that town, too!” Steele relied as Lemon held his hands up in a sign that the former Republican National Committee Chairman had proved his point.

“I’m just saying,” Lemon closed.

Reaction on X flowed in quickly.

As laid out in Luke 2: 1-20, Joseph took Mary while pregnant with Jesus to the town of Bethlehem because Caesar Augustus had ordered a census of the entire Roman world. As Luke writes, Joseph went “to Bethlehem, the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.”

So, the journey to Bethlehem was to comply with a lawful census order from Rome and not an escape from anything, let alone theutterlyy unsubstantiated charge that Joseph was a “sort of gay guy.”