(OPINION) A Texas baptist church — labeled an “anti-LGBT hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center — has caused outrage after a pastor said gay people should be “lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head.”
According to NBC News, Pastor Dillon Awes of Stedfast Baptist Church in Watauga, a suburb of Fort Worth, made the comment and other controversial remarks during a Sunday morning sermon titled “Why We Won’t Shut Up.”
“I’m angry this morning because our entire country is celebrating the worse sin in the Bible,” Awes said during the sermon referring to Pride Month, which commemorates the LGBTQ+ community every June.
“You know a lot of pastors have this stupid idea where it’s just like, ‘oh you know God loves everyone. And God hates the sin but loves the sinner.’ But people have taken this to such an extreme where they’re saying celebrate the sin, not just tolerate it, celebrate it,” he continued. “Let me show what the Bible says about these people.”
Awes read several passages from the Bible and condemned homosexuality as a sin. At one point, he told the congregation that gay people “are dangerous to society” and said that “all homosexuals are pedophiles.”
“What does God say is the answer, is the solution, for the homosexual in 2022, here in the New Testament, here in the Book of Romans?” Awes asked. “That they are worthy of death! These people should be put to death!”
“Every single homosexual in our country should be charged with the crime, the abomination of homosexuality, that they have,” he continued. “They should be convicted in a lawful trial. They should be sentenced with death.”
“They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head! That’s what God teaches. That’s what the Bible says. You don’t like it? You don’t like God’s Word, because that is what God says.” Stedfast is one of the most hateful churches in the country, and its pastors have repeatedly called for death to LGBTQ people.
“According to God we should hate Pride, not celebrate it,” Pastor Jonathan Shelley said several weeks ago at an Arlington, Texas city council meeting. “God has already ruled that murder, adultery, witchcraft, rape, bestiality, and homosexuality are crimes worthy of capital punishment.”
Shelley made headlines last year when he said that he was happy that a gay person was killed at a Pride event. “The Bible says that they’re worthy of death!” he said at the time. “They say, ‘Are you sad when f**s die?’ No. I think it’s great! I hope they all die! I would love it if every f*g would die right now.”
