Pastor Donnie Romero of the Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas delivered a fiery sermon to his congregation in which he called for the survivors of the horrific massacre at the gay Pulse night club in Orlando, Florida last week to die and burn in hell. He began his inflammatory sermon, which was uploaded to the church’s official YouTube account, by referring to the 50 people who were gunned down by Omar Mateen as “sodomites” who were killed by “another sodomite himself”.
His unfortunate words would have been harmful enough had he simply stopped there, but tragically he was compelled to keep going. Below is a transcript of the rest of Pastor Romero’s opening sermon:
“These 50 sodomites were all perverts and pedophiles and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now. And I’m going to take it a step further because I heard on the news today that there are still several dozen of these queers in ICU and intensive care, and I will pray to God like I did this morning and I will do it tonight. I will pray that God will finish the job that that man started. And He will end their life [and] by tomorrow morning they will all be burning in hell just like the rest of ‘em, so that they don’t get any more opportunities to go out and to hurt little children.”
All along as he’s saying these demonic things, congregants can be heard chanting “Amen” in apparent agreement.
Since he spoke these words and his sermon went viral, Fox 4 News caught up with the Fort Worth pastor and asked him if he’d either had a change of heart or regretted saying any of those terrible things, to which he replied, “if there was a building that had a bunch of rapists and a bunch of murderous evil people, and the building collapsed on them, or something happened where they all were killed, I don’t think that’s something we should mourn over, because they’re evil people.”
Pastor Romero is not alone in his vicious assessment however. In fact, he says he was motivated to come out and make this awful declaration only after the backlash that another Baptist preacher in Sacramento, California faced after he essentially said the same thing. This was Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church, who had this to say regarding the Orlando killings: “the tragedy is that more of them didn’t die… I’m kind of upset that [Mateen] didn’t finish the job.”
Ever since Omar Mateen walked into Pulse night club’s Latin night in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 12 and killed around 50 people and injured at least another 53, the media – particularly right-wing media – have latched onto the fact that Mateen had contacted the police during the attack and reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS. This has allowed them to frame his actions primarily through a lens of “Islamic terrorism”, tying this attack to the ones in Paris and Brussels last year and even to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City. What has been consistently minimized however is the fact that anti-LGBT attitudes and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are quite often the norm in the United States.
Recently, when an openly gay journalist named Owen Jones appeared on the British-based Sky News the night following the massacre at Pulse, he became so frustrated with the presenter’s refusal to acknowledge the massacre for what it was – an attack on the LGBT community – and walked off set. The next day he attributed this to the fact that the “’we only care about LGBT rights if Muslims are involved’ brigade are out in full force.” And who could argue differently? As the bodies of gay and lesbian men and women along with their friends and allies lay covered in blood, piled one on top of the other on the blood-drenched floor of Pulse night club hours after the shooting came to a halt, some of the voices of the Christian right wasted no time blaming the club patrons for their own deaths. First there was Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who immediately tweeted a bible verse stating that “a man reaps what he sows”. This was soon followed by the Beach Cliff Pentecostal Holiness Church in Johnson City, Tennessee putting up a sign declaring, “God’s wrath may be getting started to fall on the gays.”
Islam or no Islam, homophobia reigns supreme. For what is it that would motivate several men in Dallas, Texas to kidnap a man against his will as he leaves a gay pride parade, throw him in the back of their truck and take turns beating him with a bat while calling him a “stupid fag”? What motivates a man in Georgia to throw boiling hot water on a gay couple while they’re asleep in bed, causing third degree burns to their bodies? What compels nine young men in the Bronx to invite a 30 year-old gay man over to what they tell him is a neighborhood party, only so that they can strip him to his underwear, tie him to a chair and burn his penis with a cigarette as they shout anti-gay slurs at him? And what causes “police, courts and school officials” around the country to mete out disproportionate punishment to youth they perceive as being gay, lesbian or transgender? Are we to attribute this all to the pernicious influence of “radical Islam”, or is there something much closer to home at the heart of this?
written by Caleb G. and cross-posted from MyTrendingStories.com
United States Hypocrisy 
This incident is what inspired me to say “Fuck America and everything it stands for.”
It was the words of the pastor that affected you so? I can surely relate because his words are beyond reprehensible to anyone with a soul.
It was everything that led up to this incident that affected me.
Am I the only one that thinks he’s a latent homosexual? Is it your classical case of paradoxical thinking? He rails against gays because he’s gay and HATES himself for it? Hmm….
It most definitely wouldn’t be the first time this was the case. I don’t really want to claim him as part of my community though to be perfectly honest lol.
Reblogged this on Purple Silky Kisses and commented:
Warning: This posting is very derogatory and will piss you off. Still, it’s important to share such ignorant comments from a person who calls himself, “A Man of god,” so that we (LGBTQ community) do not forget that there is still much work that needs to be done for the sake of Equality. Thanks “US Hypocrisy,” for this share & your post.
Hi Caleb. This is very well put together as always. Still a fan of your work, just demoralized by theses morons out there with a platform and no concept of God really taking center stage in the national dialogue regarding LGBTQUI lives.
I mean it’s like news covering Stacey Dash as the voice of black women or blacks because she produces verbal fireworks. I don’t know a single black woman who can take this woman, or who considers herself similar in perspective.
The issue of violence against LGBTQUI, of intolerance, of discrimination, of housing, of a separatist mentality toward anyone of that community, deserves the spotlight without distraction or the tendency to spruce it up with a near violent pastor by the media. Then society from there.
Just my two cents.
This is sad, very sad
Thanks Caleb for this story which other than through you I might not have seen. The key word “evil”, uttered by a man with a direct line to god, always seems to lead to words and acts of violence and murder. Trouble is, unbalanced people should not be allowed to get their hands on the Bible. The Old Testament is what they always read (which must make them Jewish rather than Christian surely?). The Old Testament in part preaches genocide, racism, sexism and slavery (which it claims is pleasing to the tribal god Yahweh), making it attractive to certain groups in southern USA probably still fighting the Civil War. It also contains sublimely spiritual teachings somewhere where bigots never seem to look, and the New Testament preaches toleration and compassion. That’s never quoted. Wonder why the Pastor doesn’t do his own killing, as he seems close to Mateen in rationality? Seems more honest that way. I’d like to see all the would be slave owners of the deep south, who dislike so many things about other people to the point of killing them, shipped to Tierra del Fuego. There they can squabble like primitive savages and kill each other off. Sound just like Pastor Romero don’t I? Wonder what the gun lobby think of the massacre?
The gun lobby is parroting the usual “if they would’ve had guns they’d have been safe” bs. And your analysis is very right on, though I’d caution that their reliance on the Old Testament and taking it literally certainly doesn’t qualify them as Jewish, as there are many Jews, actually most of them, who certainly don’t take all that nonsense 100% literally. But what this proves is that anybody can profess orthodoxy to any religion and use it in a positive way or a profoundly negative way. I mean, on the one hand you’ve got some great Christian people like Martin Luther King Jr., Cornel West among many many others. Then on the other hand you have Ted Cruz, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, etc. etc.
That’s true. Any religion, in fact any concept, can be interpreted in a superstitious way, a literal way, an allegorical way, an inspired way and so on, sometimes by the same person in different modes of thought. So we can’t just react to what people say, especially on the media, which misquotes for its own ends. We have to look at a person’s record. But preachers who do the fire and brimstone bit have to also realise the bible out of context is just like a gun: it kills and maims because of the veneration with which it is held. The pastor should look at just why the prophets castigated their people who were exiles in Babylon, and what was at stake, before using the same rhetoric on a minority with a different opinion to himself. It trivialises the bible, Judaism, Christianity and the pastor himself.
Jesus did preach: judge not and you shall not be judged. But I guess that teaching doesn’t count for some Christians.
It counts for the spirit filled, low key, humble followers of Christ. Not so much for the “Christian” whose worship is conceptual, so then the accountability. 😦
Thanks Rosaliene. I guess it’s a case of picking and choosing what one wants to follow and what one does not.
the “christians” are a particularly odious bunch. filled with the ‘hate of christ’.
Well there are some of them I really like, just not this particular right-wing ‘evangelical’ crowd.
You advocate against homophobia, which is commendable, but practice Islamophobia.
Muslims can be really decent, too, just as you say “some of them [meaning Christians] are.” Why do you have to drag Islam into what is otherwise a really enlightened article? You say, “Islam or no Islam,” as though it were monolithic and evil.
Well, I have been married to a Muslim for 35 years and have traveled in the Middle East many times, and I have found that Muslims are invariably kind, generous and far more gracious and hospitable than most Americans. If you believe everything in the MSM about them, you could be forgiven for your prejudice, but it is sad that someone who writes such “good stuff” has the attitude you do towards a religion which for millions of people over 14 centuries has given guidance and light. While there is prejudice against “the Turkish vice,” there is also a lot of tolerance, and there are indeed Muslim gays.
Hi thank you so very much for your thoughtful comment. I really really think you misunderstood what I meant when I said “Islam or no Islam”. I was actually saying that it did not matter if the man was Muslim or not, his actions were homophobic. And that it wouldn’t be any different were the guy a Christian or otherwise. I feel I’m being somewhat misinterpreted by you, but maybe I’m being insensitive and should word it better? Please do respond.
I just read the sentence again. “Islam or no Islam, homophobia reigns supreme.” I am saying that homophobia is a problem whether it’s coming from Christian, Muslim, athiest, whatever. I am referring to the fact that there are right wingers out there right now who are only condemning the Orlando massacre because it was committed by someone who CLAIMS to be affiliated with Islam, and that these same people could care less about homophobia when it’s committed by Christians in this country which it mostly is. The entire point of this piece was to point out that Muslims aren’t any more homophobic or intolerant than followers of other religions.
*Exactly.* Christians and followers of Christ are two different groups, unfortunately followers of Christ do nothing “sensational” by the definition of wider society so they rarely get media coverage. But then most of society just doesn’t know what that looks like. So suddenly anyone who believes in Jesus and God is a bigot. Pedophile. [Add anything deplorable things here].
With “Christians” can’t say they are wrong. Er…with “Christians.”
Yes, I just have to remember that that there are some great Christians out there, though the negative things done by a lot of people and justified in the professed in the name of Christianity can at times appear to overshadow them. Again, I know I’ve said this already but the one I always go back to is Martin Luther King Jr., who certainly did the many great things he did while never choosing to separate it from his Christianity. In fact he cited it as what motivated him to become who he did.
Caleb,
Well it does overshadow them because reporting on the Christ followers who activate people around the homeless, elderly, sick, or those in mourning, is not sensational aka urgent, by the estimation of popular news sources. So thank you for providing a balanced counter point when you can as it is important.
And Martin Luther King was extraordinary, aside from all the recent accounting of his “infidelities” and “drinking,” (of course…more “important information to know” #eyeroll), extraordinary.
Well said, Caleb.
Thank you Norman.
Just sad
Indeed. Smh