Planting Peace, the group best-known for trolling the Westboro Baptist Church bigots with its rainbow-colored Equality House in 2013, has come up with a similar campaign to go after an Arizona pastor whose antigay rhetoric from a sermon he delivered has gone viral.
Pastor Steven Anderson made headlines this week when he said that a solution to getting rid of AIDS and HIV would be to execute homosexuals.
"If you executed the homos like God recommends," Anderson said in his sermon, "you wouldn't have all this AIDS running rampant.
"We can have an AIDS-free world by Christmas," Anderson added.
In response, Planting Peace has started an online campaign in which it will send a lump of coal to Anderson for every donation it raises for AIDS/HIV awareness.
See also: Rainbow House Now Painted; Westboro Baptist Church Responds
Anderson's sermon, delivered at his Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe this week, cites Leviticus 18:22 and says that the LGBT community is "filled with disease because of the judgment of God."
Planting Peace, founded by Aaron Jackson and John Dieubon in 2004, was a feature story by New Times in 2005. Since that time, it's helped countless homeless children throughout Haiti and India and has been a leader in helping deworm children in places like Haiti. It has also been a major force in LGBT rights and equality.
"Pastor Anderson calling for the execution of gays is a startling reminder of how much hate and bigotry still exists in our society," Jackson said via the Huffington Post. "In keeping with Planting Peace's philosophy of countering messages of hate with compassion, we wanted to provide a positive platform to bring people together to not only help people with HIV but to do so in a lighthearted way that will raise awareness for a very serious issue."
The goal of the campaign was to raise $10,000. But the group has managed to blow away that goal, raising more than $11,850 -- and climbing -- in just the few days it's been up.
Anyone wishing to make a donation can go here.
Earlier this year, Anderson preached about the subjection of women and how they must be kept silent.
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