Anti-Queer Pastor Steven L. Anderson, Who Praised Orlando Massacre, Banned from Jamaica

According to a video uploaded to his own YouTube channel, Pastor Steven L. Anderson, who heads the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Ariz., has been banned from entering Jamaica. Anderson is a stridently anti-gay pastor who has called for all gays to be executed and praised the death of everyone killed at the Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida.

According to his YouTube address, Anderson was on about to board a flight from Atlanta, Georgia, to Kingston, Jamaica when he was pulled aside and told that Jamaica would not welcome him within its borders.

“I’m pretty surprised, because I’ve seen a lot of stuff online that has said that Jamaica is ‘the most homophobic country in the world,’ so it’s pretty weird that I would be banned from Jamaica because of my views on homosexuality,” Anderson said. And, because he couldn’t go a whole four-minute video without going full conspiracy theorist, he said the country’s decision “goes to show that we’re heading into a one-world government where individual nations, they don’t really have any say over what they want to do.”

He added that Jamaica must have been forced to make the decision by an “outside influence” to be “pro-homosexual” because “the people of Jamaica are not pro-homosexual at all. Apparently that agenda is going to be crammed down their throat whether they like it or not.”

According to Anderson’s own YouTube page, Jamaica is now the fifth country that has banned him from entry. In 2016, he was banned from entering South Africa and Botswana deported him in the same year. Both countries banned him for his views that gay and lesbian people should be killed. He’s also been banned from the UK and Canada.

The news of Anderson’s ban comes a few weeks after a petition circulated to ban Anderson from Jamaica. The petition garnered over 38,000 signatures.

In 2017, the face of Jamaican Pride,Dexter Pottinger,was found dead from multiple stab wounds in his apartment. In an interview after his death, prominent Jamaican LGBT lawyer and activist Maurice Tomlinson said Pottinger was “the first time we’d actually seen somebody willing to put their face out there as a member of LGBT community as a recognizable icon and just really catapulted his advocacy.”

Jamaica’s anti-sodomy laws are a cultural remnant of British colonialism. Tomlinson wrote in 2012 Guardian article that Jamaican authorities use the laws to extort Jamaican LGBTQ citizens. Tomlinson also attributed much of the island’s homophobia to what Anderson would call “outside influences” like Evangelical Christians.

A 2012 study showed that anti-gay and anti-abortion attitudes in Africa were heavily influenced by US Evangelical Christians who were attempting a “cultural colonization” of countries on the continent.