On Tuesday night, Christian hate-preacher Aaron Thompson of Washington’s Sure Foundation Baptist Church celebrated the mass shooting at Club Q, saying that it was a “good thing” five people at the LGBTQ club were murdered because it means “they’re not here anymore to molest kids.”
There is no evidence suggesting the victims did anything of the sort, and Thompson seemed to realize that moments later when he qualified his statement by saying they were molesting kids with “their eyeballs” because the shooting took place during a drag show. However, the victims weren’t drag performers and the event was advertised as “18+.” There were no children inside the bar. Thompson apparently doesn’t know the difference between a drag performance for adults and the child-friendly Drag Queen Story Hours that sometimes take place at public libraries.
His sermon comes just months after a man who described Thompson as “my pastor” was arrested for threatening to kill LGBTQ people at a pride parade.
That club got shot up the other day… Now, am I sad that five homos got shot? No, I’m not sad at all. As a matter of fact, I think it’s a good thing that they’re not here anymore to molest kids…
… Again, I’m not condoning anybody to do anything like that. I don’t believe it’s right to take the law into our own hands, and I’ve said that so many times. But here’s what I won’t be upset about: I’m not going to be upset when someone that hates God and actively is promoting against God, and hates His guts, and molests children, even if it is just their eyeballs, to have to see these freaks writhing around and, and, and, you know doing all these crazy dances in front of children and then afterwards reading them a book or something…
… I said it’s not right to take the law into your own hands, but I do understand why people are so fed up, because our own government is protecting these freaks. And that’s all you see on the media right now. You know, “Right-wing MAGA kills”… you know… these queers, and then some guy jumped in and helped them or whatever. Who cares?
Like, I really don’t care that those people got killed. And you’re like, “That sounds really hateful, pastor.” Well, it is hateful. Because I do hate them. Because they’re a menace and a wart on the rear end of society. (Amen.) And there’s nothing redeeming about them whatsoever…
Listen: We’re in America. We could say whatever we want. And I’m not inciting violence, so don’t even try to go there. But anyway, Happy Thanksgiving…
This isn’t the first time a New Independent Fundamentalist Baptist preacher has celebrated a mass shooting with LGBTQ victims.
After the Pulse nightclub massacre in 2016, Thompson’s colleague Roger Jimenez said that the real tragedy was “that more of them didn’t die.” Jimenez has said more recently that his position on LGBTQ people is that “they should be made un-alive”:
Another New IFB preacher, Jonathan Shelley, has said he wouldn’t shed a single tear if an extremist murdered everyone in a gay bar. In 2021, Shelley even celebrated a gay man’s death at a pride parade:
These same guys also want the government to execute LGBTQ people. Jimenez has explicitly called for the government to round up all the gay people, “put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out.”
Aaron Thompson, not surprisingly, has echoed those violent beliefs as well:
The point is: None of this is new or surprising. Aaron Thompson isn’t on the fringes of right-wing extremism when he denounces Club Q. He’s merely saying out loud what plenty of conservative propagandists have said in other ways. There’s a reason there’s been a lot of discussion about “stochastic terrorism” this week.
None of this will stop unless more pastors and other right-wing influencers use their platforms to call out their hateful colleagues by name, debunk the lies routinely spread in those circles, openly defend LGBTQ people, fight for sensible gun safety measures, and refuse to work with anyone who isn’t on board with all of that.
They won’t. They don’t have the courage or the conviction. Which means conservative Christian hate speech like Aaron Thompson’s will only become more mainstream.
How many more people have to be murdered before those on the Christian Right give a damn?