Anti-gay, anti-Semitic US preacher banned from Ireland says 'God is going to punish these countries'
LONDON -- Ireland is now the 32nd country to ban American pastor Steven Anderson from preaching in the country.
Charlie Flannigan, minister for justice of Ireland, signed an exclusion order under the 1999 Immigration Act to ban Anderson, the founder of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tampe, Arizona, on May 10.
“I have signed the exclusion order under my executive powers in the interests of public policy,” Flanagan said in a statement.
According to Anderson's website, he was scheduled to preach in Dublin on May 26.
Anderson on Monday responded to the news in a video posted on YouTube, saying, “God is going to punish these countries … here they are rejecting God’s word, going a path of wickedness. And then the pastors in these countries most of the time don’t have the guts to preach what the bible actually says."
He has been vocal about his homophobic and anti-Semitic views, referring to the acronym “LGBTQ” as “Let God burn them quickly,” in a preaching conference, according to a BBC report.
He has called for the execution of gay people and applauded the Orlando massacre in June 2016 both online and in public religious events.
“The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles,” Anderson said in one video, which has been removed by YouTube for hate speech policy violation.
Anderson is also seen preaching in multiple YouTube church videos titled “The Jew and Their Lies,” “How to Hate a Jew” and “Israel Belongs to God Not Jews.”
“They brought the curse of God upon every nation that they’ve lived in,” Anderson said in one of the videos, adding that Jews run Hollywood and the banking and pornography industries.
The Faithful Word Baptist Church has been labeled as “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Watch. The blog monitors activities of the radical right.
The church’s doctrinal statement says “we believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty."
An online petition that called for Anderson's ban in Ireland had gained more than 14,000 signatures, calling him anti-LGBTQ and attempting to "get people to change their minds on last year's abortion referendum."
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