Jamaican LGBTQ Activists Successfully Barred This Anti-LGBTQ Pastor From Their Country

Steven Anderson, a rabidly anti-gay pastor from the Faithful World Baptist Church (FWBC) in Tempe, Arizona, was waiting in an Atlanta airport to board his flight to Jamaica, where he had planned a speaking tour. But then a gate agent notified him that he wouldn’t be allowed into the country. He didn’t know it, but LGBTQ activists in Jamaica had successfully gotten the hate pastor banned from their country for his many horrifically anti-LGBTQ statements.

In a letter to the Jamaican government issued last week, Jamaican LGBTQ activists wrote:

Steven Anderson poses a profound threat to vulnerable citizens, the rule of law, constitutional order and Jamaica’s societal peace…. Anderson preaches violence, and has encouraged his followers to carry out his violent threats. …

In light of the current murder crisis plaguing Jamaica, with more than 100 murders reported in the first 22 days of 2018, the government would violate its constitutional duty to protect the rights and freedoms of Jamaicans if Anderson were allowed to enter the country.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed FWBC as a hate group because of its “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”

In a video posted since his banning, Anderson has said that his being a hate pastor banned from Jamaica shows evidence of a “one-world government” forcing Jamaica to be “pro-homosexual” against its wishes. He has also been banned from Botswana, Canada, South Africa and the United Kingdom.

Anderson is trash, pure and simple. After the 2015 shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, he published a video in which he said, “The good news is there are 50 less pedophiles in this world. … The bad news is a lot of the homos in the bar are still alive, so they’re going to continue to molest children and recruit children into their filthy homosexual lifestyle.”

He has also called on “righteous governments” to stone LGBTQ people to death, calling it “a cure for AIDS.” In 2009, he prayed for then-U.S. President Barack Obama to die and go to hell.

 

Featured image by Ozphotoguy via iStock