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Ministers who cheer the execution of gays will rally in a community where LGBTQ people were massacred three years ago.
An antigay minister in Orlando is planning a "Make America Straight Again" event this month that comes days after the anniversary of the Pulse shooting and features a pastor who has called for the execution of gays.
Pastor Patrick Boyle of Orlando's Revival Baptist Church will host a conference "exposing the reprobates," according to a video on his church's YouTube channel. Boyle said the "Make America Straight Again" event, scheduled for this Friday through Sunday, will feature ministers who have already been known to "make a vocal stance against sodomites and their filth that they have been spreading to the homes and families across the world and the United States of America."
He said the conference is timed to Gay Pride Week in Orlando.
"They will be out and proud of who they are and daring someone to say something," he said, "and we're going to go ahead and take them up on it. This conference is going to be explaining our view, or rather God's view, on it."
The dates of the "Make America Straight Again" event do not coincide with Pride Week in Orlando; the conference comes about four months too soon for that. But it is an important week to the Orlando LGBTQ community, namely because June 12 marks the three-year anniversary of the Pulse shooting. That's when a man swearing allegiance to the Islamic State killed 49 people in the Orlando gay bar, most of whom were LGBTQ and Latino.
Notably, while Boyle says he wants to make America straight, he doesn't appear interested in converting the LGBTQ population, just condemning it. "The Bible says 'That which is crooked cannot be made straight,'" he said.
Boyle cites a verse in Ecclesiastes that makes no reference to homosexuality. But he said that a generation ago the message was common church doctrine condemning homosexuality.
The rest of Boyle's video features conference guests shouting hateful things from pulpits. Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church calls gay sex "unnatural" and "not normal." Jimenez made headlines in 2016 for saying the Pulse shooter didn't kill enough gays. "Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today?" he said in a sermon after the shooting. "Um, no, I think that's great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Fla., is a little safer tonight."
Outnoted another of the featured speakers, Arizona Pastor Steven Anderson, has been barred from entering 31 countries for also preaching that gays should be executed.
