Texas Residents Protest Church That Calls for Executing LGBTQ+ People
A group of concerned citizens in Texas have taken their community's safety into their own hands by protesting outside a homophobic church that moved into their town.The Stedfast Baptist Church has a history of making threatening yet Constitutionally-protected statements that advocate violence against the LGBTQ+ community.
But residents of Watauga, the church’s latest home after being evicted out of other towns, are taking a stand by protesting every time the church holds a service.“We’re normal people,” Mandi Skinner, with partner Lynette Sharp, tells the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in a video interview. “We just live our lives every day.
It just so happens that I love her and she loves me and neither of us owns a penis.”The pair are among the residents who gather to protest outside the strip mall where the Stedfast Baptist Church holds its services twice on Sundays and once every Wednesday evening.One preacher from the church, Dillon Awes, previously declared the Bible’s solution to what he called the “sodomite deception” is that queer people “should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head.”“He’s calling for people like us to be shot,” Skinner continued. “There’s no way for us not to feel, think, and believe it’s just a matter of time before someone from that congregation decides to take up arms and do his bidding.”Awes made the inflammatory and threatening statements in a past sermon entitled, Why We Won’t Shut Up.
In the videotaped sermon, Awes said gay men were predatory pedophiles who have either committed sex crimes against a child or just haven’t had the opportunity to do so yet, leading him to the conclusion that “We need to put these people to death through the proper channels of the.
