Shirley Caesar
Pastor Shirley Caesar is honored is honored at the NMAAM 2016 Black Music Honors, Aug. 18, 2016 in Nashville, Tennessee. Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for National Museum of African American Music

While gospel singer Kim Burrell continues to come under fire for a homophobic sermon made last week, fellow musician Shirley Caesar has come to her defense, suggesting that the main problem with the comments were that they weren’t made earlier.

Caesar, an 11-time Grammy Award winner, expressed her opinion in a sermon of her own that could be seen in a video posted online Wednesday. Although the date and location of the clip has not been verified, the 78-year-old, who is also a pastor, was scheduled to speak at the First Baptist Church of Glenarden in Baltimore Wednesday evening.

Caesar first remarked that Burrell should have collected all the cell phones in the church before giving her sermon. “Anytime you want to say something to our church, collect the phones first,” she said. But it was her questioning of the timing of Burrell’s words that led to Caesar being condemned across social media.

“If you were going to say something, you should've said something four years ago when our president made that stuff all right,” Caesar said in addressing Burrell’s comments.

President Barack Obama came out in support of gay marriage in 2012.

Burrell has been subject to heavy criticism after video of her sermon in Houston last week went viral on social media. The 44-year-old had been due to perform a song from the recent “Hidden Figures” movie alongside Pharrell Williams on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” Thursday, but the host cancelled her appearance after hearing the remarks.

Burrell claimed that homosexuals were both sinners and perverted.

“I came to tell you about sin,” she said at the Love and Liberty Fellowship Church. “That sin nature, that perverted homosexual spirit is the spirit of delusion and confusion, it has deceived many men and women and it has cast a stain on the body of Christ."

She continued: “You as a man, you open your mouth and take a man’s penis in your face, you are perverted. You are a woman and will shake your face in another woman’s breast, you are perverted. It has come to our church and it has embarrassed the Kingdom of God.”

Burrell later posted a Facebook Live video in which she claimed the criticisms were “the design of the enemy to make it look like I have a personal agenda against people.”

Caesar’s career has spanned more than six decades and earned her the title of the “Queen of Gospel Music.” She was honored by the National Museum of African American Music last August.

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