It's emerged that a fundamentalist American pastor has been banned from the UK.
Steven Anderson was due to be travelling through London en route to South Africa and Botswana. Christian Today had already reported that Anderson had been banned from South Africa over his anti-gay comments. Now it has emerged he has also been banned from the UK.
He has made a litany of offensive remarks, including suggesting that the people killed by a gunman in a gay nightclub in Orlando earlier this year were "paedophiles".
Anderson claims that as he was about to board a flight, he was told that he had been banned from changing flights in London and so he had to find another route to Botswana (where he said, "We're gonna say whatever we want, we're gonna do whatever we want").
In typically offensive style, he released a video, describing South Africa as, "The rape capital of the world... one of the most dangerous, wicked places in the entire world."
A Home Office spokesperson confirmed the pastor has been banned from the UK. He said, "The Home Secretary has the power to exclude an individual if she considers that his or her presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good or if their exclusion is justified on public policy grounds... Coming here is a privilege that we refuse to extend to those who seek to subvert our shared values."
Anderson, whose church is not affiliated with any denomination, has a long history of offensive remarks and he has promoted Holocaust denial.
