When actress Seyi Omooba was dropped from a production of The Color Purple, it was blatantly in response to an old homophobic Facebook she wrote and refused to apologize for.
Now, she’s claiming religious discrimination.
“I do not believe you can be born gay, and I do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal doesn’t mean its right,” Omooba wrote in 2014. She continued explaining how sinful she feels being gay is, and ended with a plea for Christians “to step up and love but also tell the truth of God’s word.”
Hamilton actor Aaron Lee Lambert originally shared Omooba’s post, asking her for an explanation. She failed to respond publicly at the time, but Leicester Curve and Birmingham Hippodrome eventually released a statement saying her comments “caused significant and widely expressed concerns” and “following careful reflection,” she would no longer be in the show.
Now, Omooba has told the Daily Mail that the theater and her agency suggested she apologize and retract her anti-LGBTQ statements and apologize, but she refused.
“I really wanted the role but what they wanted me to do was completely against my faith. I did not want to lie just to keep a job,” she said. “I stand by what I wrote, but had I known that it would have come to this, I would have set my account to the privacy mode.”
Uh, yeah, because the problem here is that people found out about the homophobia.
While Omooba’s homophobic beliefs may have been a problem in any scenario, especially considering how LGBTQ-friendly the theater as a profession has long been, people were particularly concerned that she had been cast in the lead role of Celie in The Color Purple, a character who has an emotional and sexual relationship with another woman in the story. To allow someone who expresses anti-gay views to play such a role sends a very mixed message.
But Omooba insists that she had a right to express homophobic sentiments because they are in line with the Bible, and to fire her based on them infringed upon her religious rights. And as such, she is now suing the theater and her agents for breach of contract.
“I want to make sure no other Christian has to go through something like this,” she said.
