An anti-gay Sunday sermon by Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, has gone viral on the internet.
The pastor says in the sermon that he has finally found a solution to make the world AIDS-free: Execute all those who are identified as homosexuals.
Urging his congregation to open their bibles to Leviticus 20:13, Anderson said: "I actually discovered the cure for AIDS. Everybody's talking about, 'Let's have an AIDS-free world by 2020.' Look, we can have an AIDS-free world by Christmas," he promised as the people present there laughed.
He continued referring to the section of the Bible he asked his congregation to open: "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman. it says, even both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. And that, my friend, is the cure for AIDS."
He further said that while the world is spending billions of dollars in research and testing, the solution was always there in the Bible. "It's curable — right there. Because if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn't have all this AIDS running rampant."
Pastor Steven Anderson also said that no "queers" or "homos" will be allowed inside the church as long as he serves as pastor. The video of the sermon is below.
When two Phoenix-based pastors saw the video, they said that there was more hate than anything else in Anderson's speech. "I see a lot of drama," said Pastor Vernon Meyer with Sun Lakes United Church of Christ. "That's very offensive when he says 'homo'," USA Today reports.
The most offensive part, however, is when he says: "All homos are pedophiles. There, I said it, they're all pedophiles."
Jeffrey Dirrim of Rebel & Divine United Church of Christ said: "I do not view him as a pastor. That's not what he's doing."
Pastor Anderson founded the church in Arizona. He and his wife Zsuzsanna have seven children. The website of the church reveals that Pastor Anderson "holds no college degree but has well over 140 chapters of the Bible memorized word-for-word, including approximately half of the New Testament."
A section of the site also states that it can "revolutionize the way you memorize the Bible," and anyone can commit the Bible to memory in just five years, The New Civil Rights Movement reports.
