A clip taken from a recent sermon delivered by fundamentalist Baptist preacher Jason Graber has gone viral on social media for Graber’s violent language toward parents who would allow their children to receive gender reassignment surgery.
Graber is pastor of Sure Foundation Baptist Church in Spokane, Washington, a congregation that is loosely affiliated with a movement of Independent Fundamentalist Baptists led by Arizona pastor Steven Anderson, who is known nationally for espousing violent rhetoric against the LGBTQ+ community.
While the full video of Graber’s sermon has since been taken down from YouTube, a clip featuring key moments of the message continues to circulate on Twitter.
“To any parents who would have their child have a transgender surgery done on them, any parent that would do that, they just need to be shot in the back of the head,” Graber said in the sermon. “They need to be convicted in trial and immediately shot in the back of the head, okay? And then we can string them up above a bridge, so that the public can see the consequences of that kind of wickedness.”
Graber later said, “And so there should be no excuse to not put these people to death—no excuse whatsoever.”
“There are very few people out there who are actually fighting the spiritual fight,” Graber said, challenging his congregation to find another preacher in the Spokane area who preaches “the message where they said that these child molesters, that these child butchers, that these f****ts, all these LGBTQ people, people that desire strange flesh, that they should all be put to death in a public execution by the government.”
“Find me the preacher that says that,” Graber reiterated. “I wanna see him.”
This is not the only time in recent months that Graber has offered harsh words to parents with regard to LGBTQ+ issues. In a sermon delivered on Mother’s Day, Graber urged mothers to instruct their children with spiritual wisdom. However, he offered a very specific vision for that instruction.
Should mothers fail in their duties, Graber argued, any number of “pitfalls” could beset their children. Included among these pitfalls were the possibility of daughters becoming “whores,” as well as of young men who sleep with “one of these whorish women” contracting AIDS.
“At some point, she slept with somebody who’s a homo, okay, that’s how AIDS—basically, you’re in contact with somebody who’s a homo if you have AIDS,” Graber said. “Because that’s where AIDS comes from: it’s from homos. And so that’s the only way it gets around.”
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Graber added, “If you look at somebody who has AIDS, this is the type of thing that’s happened to them, okay, or they are that person…You’re worthless at that point.”
