US pastor Steven Anderson says gay people should be executed for an 'Aids free Christmas'

The Arizona pastor said the 'cure' for Aids was contained in Leviticus

A US Christian pastor has claimed that the world could be “Aids free by Christmas” if all gay people were executed.

In a sermon titled “Aids: The Judgement of God”, Steven Anderson told the congregation of the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, that the Bible advocates genocide of LGBT people.

“Anybody who's a homo or bi - it's all the same category - sodomite is what the Bible would call them,” he said.

Speaking ahead of World Aids Day, which took place on 1 December, Anderson said the world had been “brainwashed” about the disease, which he claimed was in fact “the judgement of God”.

In a sermon during which he ranted and stomped his feet, he said he had discovered the “cure” for Aids in the book of Leviticus.

He said: “We can have an Aids free world by Christmas. Okay, it wouldn’t be totally Aids free, but we’d be like 90-some per cent Aids free by Christmas if we follow this.”

Telling his audience to turn to Leviticus 20:13, Anderson read aloud: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, even both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.”

He then said: “And that, my friend, is the cure for Aids. It was right there in the Bible all along - and they’re out spending billions of dollars in research and testing. It’s curable - right there. Because if you executed the homos like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all this AIDS running rampant.”

As the audience laughed, Anderson went on to quote “statistics” that he claimed proved that contracting HIV was directly related to being “homo”.

In the sermon he also stated that “no queers [are] allowed in this church” and boasted that there was no law against his rule. Anderson claimed that all gay people are paedophiles who would pose a threat to children in the congregation.

And he also suggested that openly condemning homosexuality was part of loving God and practising the Christian faith.

Anderson has gained a reputation as a fundamentalist and hate-preacher. He caused particular controversy in 2009 when he professed his hate for US President Barack Obama and prayed for him to die and go to hell.

He has also claimed that women who take the contraceptive pill are “whores” whose blood has turned green.

For someone who claims to know the Bible inside out, Anderson obviously didn’t read the part about loving one another…