Joel Webbon, a Texas pastor who hosts “The NXR Podcast,” called “Star Wars” “one of the gayest franchises” in a clip that Right Wing Watch posted on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
“Star Wars is seriously it is one of the gayest franchises, one of the gayest stories,” Webbon said in the clip. A few words later, he added, “It is so feminine. It is so feminized.”
He also called it homosexual, then said, “It’s truly truly terrible.”
The clip opens with his verdict on the franchise’s message. “In terms of the message of Star Wars, it is absolutely liberal boomer slop,” he said. Anyone who likes that message, he went on, needs to “sit down and tell your dad you’re gay.”
Right Wing Watch’s clip doesn’t name the episode, but Soap Central, which reported the remarks on Saturday, Nov. 7, credits them to an NXR+ app episode titled “I’ll Take Fascism Over Democracy.”
NXR Studios premiered an episode with that title on YouTube on Monday, Nov. 2, and the show bills itself on Apple Podcasts as “Unapologetically Christian. Unapologetically Right Wing.”
Apple lists the 58-minute episode under “CN Weekly,” the Monday show Webbon hosts with two co-hosts, and NXR posts a different show every weekday at 5 p.m. ET. In the clip, Webbon is at a microphone marked NXR, with “New Christian Right” branding in view.
Soap Central reported that fans pushed back, arguing that the fandom “had already debated the issue” and that many fans believed the franchise could be even more inclusive.
Joel Webbon on ‘Star Wars’: ‘The Message Is Entirely Wrong’
Right Wing Watch, a project of the advocacy group People For the American Way, built its post around the end of the clip. Webbon said young straight Christian men go to “Star Wars” and like the cinematography, but “the message is entirely wrong.”
The clip ends as he says the bad guy is actually the good one, and Right Wing Watch’s headline names that bad guy as Darth Vader.
“Hard to imagine a more telling statement,” Right Wing Watch wrote in its post on the clip.
Who Is Joel Webbon, Host of ‘The NXR Podcast’?
The Christian Post described him in March 2025 as “a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist and leader of Covenant Bible Church in Georgetown,” in a story on his claim that there’s “no place” for non-Christians in American leadership.
He also founded Right Response Ministries, Right Wing Watch has reported. Apple Podcasts lists him as the host of “The NXR Podcast,” which promises “Five shows. Five days.”
“Jews cannot hold public office,” Webbon said on the March 7, 2025, episode of his Right Response Ministries podcast, The Christian Post reported. Right Wing Watch’s profile of him says he believes women should not have the right to vote.
The Nov. 2 episode’s YouTube description promotes a conference called “Christ Is King: America After Trump,” set for Nov. 12 to 14 at the Irving Convention Center in Irving, Texas, near Dallas, according to the conference’s website.
‘Star Wars’ Queer Characters, From Larma D’Acy to Vel Sartha
Lucasfilm’s galaxy has been getting a little gayer on screen for years. In 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker,” Commander Larma D’Acy, played by Amanda Lawrence, is “glimpsed sharing a kiss with a female pilot” during a celebration scene, ET reported. The character debuted in “The Last Jedi,” serving under Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo.
Director J.J. Abrams told Variety he wanted “Star Wars” to look “more the way the world looks than not,” according to ET. In “Andor,” rebels Vel Sartha and Cinta Kaz are a couple.
“People love who they love, and I think it’s important that we don’t forget that,” Faye Marsay, who plays Vel, told Slashfilm in 2022.
“The Acolyte” creator Leslye Headland heard the same superlative in 2024. In a video interview with TheWrap, she said people have told her “it’s the gayest Star Wars.” When star Amandla Stenberg asked, “You’re offended?” Headland replied, “Into it.”
Fans debated whether a young Obi-Wan Kenobi came out as bisexual in Kiersten White’s 2022 novel “Padawan,” and in May, Ian McKellen told The Guardian that Alec Guinness, the original Obi-Wan, had once urged him to step back from LGBTQ+ activism.
