HOLLAND – Homophobic preacher Steven Anderson, who has been banned from the Netherlands for his views on homosexuality and the Holocaust, has told broadcaster NOS that the Netherlands is becoming ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’.
Anderson said he had not been told officially that he would not be allowed into the Netherlands to ‘win souls’ but that he had heard ‘via via’ he is not welcome and that he would not attempt to make the journey. ‘It is your loss,’ Anderson said in a short video clip. ‘If you continue this path to becoming a Sodom and Gomorrah you are going to end up the way Sodom and Gomorrah ended up.’
The event he was planning to attend is still going to happen with other preachers, he said. Gay rights campaign organisation COC, MPs from across the spectrum and Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, all urged the government to block Steven Anderson after he announced his plan to speak in the capital on May 23.
Junior justice minister Mark Harbers said on Wednesday that measures would be taken to stop Anderson at the border, though he did not specify what these were. Harbers said there was no place in ‘a democratic state such as ours’ for discrimination, incitement to hatred or intolerance or violence towards another group.
