An Arizona Baptist pastor has claimed that the solution to the AIDS pandemic is the execution of all homosexuals. In an astonishing sermon preached the day before World AIDS Day entitled AIDS: The Judgment of God, Rev Stephen Anderson, pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, said that it was possible to achieve an “AIDS-free Christmas.”
In remarks that have caused widespread outrage, Anderson said: “Turn to Leviticus 20:13 because I actually discovered the cure for AIDS. This is the cure for AIDS. Everyone is talking about ‘let’s have an AIDS-free world by 2020.’ Look, we can have an AIDS-free world by Christmas. Ok, it wouldn’t be totally AIDS-free, but we’d be 90-something per cent AIDS-free by Christmas if we follow this.” Reading the Leviticus passage, he said: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall be surely put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. And that, my friend, is the cure for AIDS.”
Speaking to Newslo, the pastor was bold enough to defend the chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, Martin Shkreli, who recently purchased the rights to AIDS drug Dapaprim and immediately increased its cost from $13.50 to $750 per pill. “I do not know whether Mr. Shkreli is a religious man or not, but I am certain he will go to Heaven when he dies,” pastor Anderson said.
Asked whether or not it was in accordance with Christianity to do harm onto others, which is exactly what Shkreli did by hiking the cost of the drug by 5,500 percent (which only costs $1 to manufacture), Anderson replied that “God already punished homosexuals by giving them AIDS,” which makes it “OK in God’s book” for other people to make it impossible for them to treat and help themselves.
“I personally do not believe that God is responsible for anything wrong or bad on this Earth,” the pastor said. “However, I am a firm believer in God’s righteous judgment and His ability to issue punishment for those who deserve it. And I think we all agree that sodomites deserve to be punished in any way possible, whether it’s by disabling them from seeking medical care, executing them or letting a disease rotten their bodies.”
“And since men do not possess the power of almighty God, we must do what we can to help his punishment be conducted to the fullest. That is why I applaud Mr. Shkreli for his actions, regardless of the fact that they weren’t a punishment as much as a simple business move. He shall be rewarded for it some day,” the pastor concluded.
