WASHINGTON, DC — The pastor selected by President Obama to deliver the invocation at his inauguration on January 21 has announced he will withdraw from the proceedings, after comments he made during sermons in the 1990s were criticized as being homophobic.

A sermon by Atlanta-based Rev. Louie Giglio, the Pastor of Passion City Church, entitled “In Search of a Standard: Christian Response to Homosexuality,” includes a warning against LGBT Rights: “That movement is not a benevolent movement,” he preached.

Giglio added, “it is a movement to seize by any means necessary the feeling and the mood of the day, to the point where the homosexual lifestyle becomes accepted as a norm in our society and is given full standing as any other lifestyle, as it relates to family.”

He also said that homosexuality “is sin in the eyes of God, and it is sin in the word of God.”

Giglio, the founder of Passion Conferences, a faith-based ministry that organizes college students in prayer activities, urged Christians to oppose the gay rights “aggressive agenda,” and said that “the healing power of Jesus” is “the only way out of a homosexual lifestyle.”

LGBT advocates criticized the selection of Giglio as insensitive to gays. The reaction to Giglio’s selection contrasted sharply with that of Richard Blanco, an openly gay Cuban-American writer who was chosen to serve as this year’s inaugural poet.