Jewish community joins fight against gay hate pastor

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies has urged the government to block hate pastor Steven Anderson’s trip to the country.

In a statement, the board said it “strongly objects to the upcoming visit to South Africa of American pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona”.

Anderson not only supports and advocates for the execution of gay people but is also virulently anti-Semitic and a holocaust denier.

He is set to visit Johannesburg in a missionary style evangelical excursion to “win souls” for his hateful cause on 18 September.

Together with the Hate Crimes Working Group, the board called on the South African authorities “to decline his visa to visit our shores where he will continue to spread deeply prejudiced vitriol”.

The organisation continued: “His ideologies are in direct opposition to the principles set out in our country’s Constitution, including the human rights to equality and dignity.”

The board pointed out that South Africa’s recent abstention from a vote at the UN Human Rights Council to appoint a Special Rapporteur on LGBTI Rights “sent mixed messages” about SA’s commitment to protecting LGBTI rights.

“Denying Anderson entry into SA would go some way to reassuring the LGBTI community, and to reasserting zero tolerance for hate speech and bigotry,” said the group.

“Our country continues to grapple with issue of identity and tolerance. Allowing Anderson to conduct his activities in South Africa will only serve to perpetuate ignorance and create further division in our society,” the board added.

Anderson, who heads up Tempe’s Faithful Word Baptist Church, has stated that killing gay people would free the world from the AIDS epidemic. “…if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running rampant,” he said in 2014.

Most recently, Anderson praised the slaughter of 49 (at first thought to be 50) people at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando. “The good news is that there’s 50 less paedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and paedophiles,” he proclaimed in a YouTube video the day after the massacre.

He has also continued to state his belief that governments must execute gay people. His church has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of 892 hate groups operating in the US.

To help stop Anderson’s visit to South Africa, sign the petition or file a complaint with the SA Human Rights Commission.