Anti-gay Arizona pastor Steven Anderson becomes the first person ever to be banned from entering Ireland

The first person to be banned from entering the country of Ireland is an Arizona far-right pastor who’s known for some of the most vicious anti-gay rhetoric to ever emanate from an evangelical figure.

According to The Irish Times, the country’s Minister for Justice, Charlie Flanagan, signed an order to block the entry of Pastor Steven Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona. Anderson has reportedly scheduled a trip to Dublin for May 26 and planned to preach to a congregation there.

The order was signed under the country’s 1999 Immigration Act and has been implemented for the first time ever in order to block Anderson.

Anderson has an lengthy history of praising violence against the LGBT community. In the wake of the horrific 2016 massacre in Orlando that targeted a gay nightclub, Anderson celebrated the deaths saying that there are now “50 less pedophiles” in the world.

“Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place, because that’s not going through the proper channels,” Anderson said in a video posted to YouTube. “But these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels, as in they should have been executed by a righteous government that would have tried them, convicted them, and saw them executed. Because, in Leviticus 20:13, God’s perfect law, he put the death penalty on murder, and he also put the death penalty on homosexuality. That’s what the Bible says, plain and simple.”

He also blamed the victims of the massacre at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, France, back in 2015. The massacre took place during a show put on by the Eagles of Death Metal.

“When you go to a concert of death metal, somebody might get killed!” he said.

Anderson has also been banned from other counties, which include the U.K., South Africa, Canada, Jamaica, and all countries within the European Union.

Before the order was signed, 14,000 people signed a petition calling for him to be banned.

Featured image: screen grab/YouTube

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.