Christian Hate-Preacher Steven Anderson Has Been Banned from Entering Australia

Christian hate-preacher Steven Anderson of Arizona’s (independent fundamentalist) Faithful Word Baptist Church says he’s now banned from entering Australia.

It’s the 33rd country he’s no longer allowed to step foot in due to his insistence that gay people should be executed by the government because the Bible says so, and his joy in discussing LGBTQ people who have been killed during terrorist attacks.

… So I’ve been planning a trip out to Australia to preach for Pastor Kevin Sepulveda at New Life Baptist Church in Sunshine Coast and also I was gonna be preaching at New Life Baptist Church in Sydney, Australia. Their church plant there. But I just got word back today that, basically, I’m banned from Australia. My ETA [Electronic Travel Authority — a visa required for short-term visits] was denied by Australia. I’m not going to be permitted to enter the country.

Just in the past few months, Anderson was banned from entering the Netherlands and the Schengen area, which covers a huge swath of Europe. He was also banned from Ireland, making him the first person blocked from entering the country under the exclusion powers granted by the nation’s Immigration Act 1999. Section 4 of that Act says a person can be banned if it’s deemed “necessary in the interest of national security or public policy.”

That’s all in addition to getting banned from Botswana, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Jamaica.

Anderson now says he’s making arrangements to speak in New Zealand, where a white supremacist murdered more than 50 Muslims in Christchurch earlier this year. At least, he added, “if I don’t get banned from New Zealand. So we’ll see what happens.”

If New Zealand can respond to gun violence in a sensible way, surely they can stop further radicalization by banning this guy.

Again, all of this is happening because Anderson celebrated the deaths of dozens of LGBTQ people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando by saying, “The good news [about the massacre] is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because… these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles.” He also said the U.S. government should execute homosexuals by way of a firing squad because that’s what the Bible commands. There are also the numerous misogynistic comments and Holocaust denialism.

He wears each ban as a badge of honor, as if he’s a Christian martyr, but it’s important to remember none of this has to do with his Christianity. He’s being punished for his glorification of violence in the name of God.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)