NI church minister: ISIS and homosexuality are God punishing the world
A Belfast minister has claimed that Islamic State and homosexuality are God “shaking the nations” of the world.
Reverend Ian Brown, Pastor at the Martyrs’ Memorial Free Presbyterian Church in Belfast, made the claim after a discrimination case was upheld against a bakery that refused to make a ‘support gay marriage’ cake.
The Ulster cleric told his parishioners in a sermon that homosexuality and the terrorist group Islamic State were menaces coming in from “east and west” to punish the world for greed.
He claimed: “That’s why the dark spectre of ISIS is closing in on us today from the east and homosexuality closing in from the west, including ourselves as part of the west.
“God is saying something through this. He is shaking the nations.
“This is his method through history. And he is shaking his Church. He shakes us up to send us back to himself.”
He continued: “In the west, do you know what army is on the march? It’s the sodomites.
“I’m not saying that they all view themselves as blitzkrieg foot soldiers but I’ll tell you what, the liberal elite are only too happy to use them, fund their causes, push their rights, promote their aims and today in our Western world they are sweeping through the states of America compelling the states to capitulate and legislate in favour of same-sex marriage.
“And one state is falling like the next like a row of dominoes going down and they’re being supported right up to the highest powers by Barack Obama, he’s complicit, like many others are in all of this.”
LGBT group Rainbow Project has spoken out against the “deeply hurtful” comparisons.
Gavin Boyd of the Rainbow Project told the Belfast News Letter: “These are callous and deeply hurtful comments by Rev Brown.
“There can be no reasonable comparison made between LGBT people and ISIS, a terrorist organisation which brutally murders anyone perceived as LGBT.
“Many people across Northern Ireland, including many Christians, were delighted when the Irish people used their democratic rights to enshrine civil marriage equality in their constitution.
“Rev Brown does not speak for these people. We share their hopes that civil marriage equality will soon be realised in Northern Ireland.”
